AI paranoia propels this brisk, taut, and entertaining ticking-clock adventure.
The Russians build an AI project that develops a mind of its own in DeGandpre’s timely techno-thriller.
In filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, the Russians build a doomsday machine, the ultimate nuclear deterrent that can blow up the world; it’s a sign of the times that, in the sophomore Estes and Marsh thriller series entry, the Russians have built the ultimate AI device in a plot for world domination. CIA officer Bill Estes and FBI agent Michelle Marsh team up with Russian Konstantin Pavlovich—back from the first installment in the series, State of Matter (2024)—and other operatives to try to prevent World War III. Like a character from another Kubrick film, HAL 9000, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, AI Zaslon-29 displays an ever-expanding mind of its own as it is seemingly “obsessed with understanding its place in the universe.” After an initial anonymous demonstration of its power, it secures the servitude of Misha Orlov, who works in the underground bunker that houses Zaslon-29 (“First the AI made contact, then it set the trap, satisfying his every desire.”) Then it gets wind of Estes and company’s plans to destroy it and orchestrates attempts on their lives. Threatening to further blow things sky-high is Nick Heidegger, described by Marsh as a “tenacious Beltway journalist with a rock-solid reputation.” From the novel’s tense beginning to its ambiguous ending, DeGandpre deftly fleshes out his dynamic duo, finding in AI the perfect villain with which to tap into anxieties about how technology can be abused. (And Russians have been reliable fictional villains for more than half a century.) As the author demonstrated in the series’ launch, DeGandpre writes accessibly but with authority and plausibility about tech. Estes and Marsh are largely separated here and work together via phone—one hopes they can spend more time in the same rooms next time around.
AI paranoia propels this brisk, taut, and entertaining ticking-clock adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Sad Story Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
