A captivating financial thriller that works despite some daunting jargon.
A retired computer genius is called into action when the world financial markets are at risk in Mattison’s thriller.
In the year 2027, a year after his abrupt departure from the ICARUS project, Rory O’Connor is living off the grid in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He’s lost his best friend, Peter Costello, in a violent robbery in Chicago, and left his job and the city—his days in international finance and intrigue are behind him. Or so he thinks. As ICARUS, the game-changing quantum AI platform that operates the world’s financial markets (“Co-located servers, fiber networks, and complex algorithms had created a stock market run more by machines than by men or women”), launches its final phase, some unusual activity online lures Rory back into action. A sometimes-convoluted narrative finds Rory working with Peter’s sister, Mia, along with Rory and Peter’s former boss, Milton McGrady, the CEO of a company called Celtic Capital, to beat bad guys from China, Russia, and India to the contents of an encrypted thumb drive left by Peter. The stakes include dire consequences not only for the individuals involved but for the world financial order as well. Rory and Mia fight the good fight around the world, mostly in Switzerland and Chicago. Along the way, of course, they fall for each other, increasing the tension when they both get into life-threatening situations at the Basel headquarters of ICARUS, a complex containing a mainframe called Quoz. Despite its challenging-to-parse subject matter—including AI, the financial world, politics of world powers, crypto-currency, and the blockchain—the novel is an exciting read. The author has created a likeable and relatable hero in Rory, and Mia is a worthy sidekick. Together, they offset the book’s financial and political mumbo-jumbo with big doses of humor and some exciting action sequences. Readers’ enjoyment won’t be stymied much by the lack of an MBA or intimate knowledge of finance; Mattison explains enough for readers to keep up and knows how to spin an exciting yarn.
A captivating financial thriller that works despite some daunting jargon.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798888452028
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.
Murder disrupts the filming of—what else?—The Word Is Murder, based on the first novel starring author Horowitz and his sometime partner, ex-copper Daniel Hawthorne.
With commendably dramatic timing, gofer Izzy Mays bursts into the middle of a pivotal shot on location at The Stade in Hastings to announce that Hawthorne’s been murdered. Of course, what she means (though Horowitz takes his time clarifying this ambiguity) is that David Caine, the rising star playing Hawthorne, has been fatally stabbed in the neck. Suspicion falls on James Aubrey, the agent Caine had just fired; Izzy, because Caine had caused her to be fired, too, though he ended up making his exit first; Ralph Seymour, the washed-up actor who’d returned from New Zealand to play Horowitz opposite Caine, his mortal enemy; and producer Teresa de León, who’s abruptly lost an important source of funding for the project; director Cy Truman; and screenwriter Shanika Harris, because why not? After Hawthorne builds meticulous hypothetical cases against several of these suspects, provoking Teresa’s apt rejoinder, “All those questions in the script and now you’re asking them for real,” he responds to Horowitz’s theory that he may have been the intended target after all by sharing a story from his early days as a private investigator in what ends up looking like the most elaborately extended red herring in the history of detective fiction. The two plots, past and present—or, to be more precise, past and present-day-adaptation-of-a-story-from-the-less-distant-past, are eventually woven together in ways only Horowitz’s most devoted fans will celebrate.
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780063305748
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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