A lengthy but straightforward thriller that’s never short on cleverness and zeal.
In Kirk’s debut techno-thriller, scientists struggle to protect a functional quantum computer from people willing to kill for it.
After spending billions of dollars of investors’ money, California pharmaceutical company StruvePharma finally has something to show for it. CEO Peter Struve, however, surprises venture capital firm ZMPC by delivering not a drug but a device capable of generating synthetic crude oil. Later, a gunman gets past security at the StruvePharma campus, accosts the company’s resident genius, Dr. Emily Dura, and demands the device. He also wants the latest prototype of StruvePharma’s QUBE, a quantum computer of which very few people are aware. Head of security John Shea and his team quickly show up, but neither Emily nor QUBE Charlie, the most reliable prototype, survives the ensuing gunfight. Peter feels lost without Emily, the brains behind QUBE, so he turns to the person who may best know her work: her ex-husband, Stanford University professor Jack Dura. As Jack tries to design and build a new prototype, QUBE Delta, StruvePharma’s chief technical officer Aidan O’Keefe has something nefarious planned; readers know he’s in cahoots with powerful people and that he’s not the only mole at the company. Jack and others soon learn QUBE’s connection to a potent, biological virus and an imminent attack. Kirk’s novel smoothly traverses multiple genres: the final act is full-scale action; espionage crops up, courtesy of an industrial spy; and QUBE’s abilities place the book in the realm of science fiction. Readers will find that Jack takes some getting used to, as he’s initially a puerile man who only agrees to join StruvePharma on the condition he be allowed to punch Aidan, who once had an affair with Emily. But Jack does acknowledge his flaws, and his tragic back story gives him depth. Kirk’s intelligent prose is rife with scientific jargon and theories, but he brightens his tale with romance (between Jack and FBI agent Laurel Wynn) and many cinematic references. The latter are best enjoyed if readers already know the movies well; one baddie is said to resemble the “homicidal doll” in the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, for example, but the description is otherwise vague.
A lengthy but straightforward thriller that’s never short on cleverness and zeal.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-68733-8
Page Count: 632
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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