Fearless! But we never did decipher the title.
Debut British thriller whose originality turns on infinitudes of computer surrealism.
Cybersex in private chat rooms leads to ever-stronger pages and, about halfway through, to a long walk through Weirdsville. Jason has been happy with roommate Amy Sinclair, 24, whom he married without benefit of clergy. But Amy’s crying jags during sex, while in abeyance for the past year, now erupt more often. Self-absorbed Jason gets into cybersex with Claire Warner in the Internet’s Melanie Room, and when Amy departs, leaving a note saying she’ll return, Jason blames himself. After four months, he’s certain she’s been raped and murdered, as indeed so has Claire. Jason finds some rape sites on the Internet and, making up the screen name “Amy17,” baits a hook for the rapist, Kareem. Jason knows the woodland jogging ritual of a girl named Charlie and suckers Kareem into attacking her. But Charlie knows martial arts, creams Kareem, and, after a chase, Jason kills him for not revealing Amy’s whereabouts. Within a day, Jason has killed two more men and now has three deaths on his hands. Meanwhile, his childhood hacker buddy Graham, unhappily married to Helen, helps Jason break into a secret cyber file that puts Jason on the trail leading to those second and third deaths. But this secret file has some kind of supervirus attached to it that knocks out half the servers in America and is on its way to destroying the Internet. Jason’s tracking leads him to Dennison, a nut who believes words are as alive as cells or animals and who has saved a gigantic library of lost words and works he downloads from the Internet, echoing Jorge Luis Borges’s story “The Library of Babel.” From this point on, the story repeats many of its own passages and sweeps off into a crazed whirlwind of gutsy plotting.
Fearless! But we never did decipher the title.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-75286-006-2
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Orion/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.
A hard-partying flight attendant runs afoul of Russian conspirators.
Cassandra Bowden, like her namesake, the prophetess who is never believed, has problems. A flight attendant since college, Cassie, now nearing 40, has a penchant for drinking to the blackout point and sleeping with strange men. On a flight to Dubai, while serving in first class, she flirts with hedge fund manager Alex Sokoloff, an American with Russian roots and oligarchic connections. She repairs to his hotel room, and during the drunken bacchanal that follows, Miranda, apparently a business acquaintance of Alex’s, visits with more vodka. The next morning Cassie wakes up next to Alex, who lies dead, his throat cut. She has blacked out much of the night, so although she’d grown rather fond of him, how can she be sure she didn’t kill him? Rushing back for the return flight, she decides not to disclose what happened, at least not until she's back home in New York City, where the justice system is arguably less draconian than in Dubai. At JFK, the FBI interviews the deplaning crew, and Cassie plays dumb. Unfortunately, her walk of shame through the hotel lobby was captured on security cam. Sporadically intercut with Cassie’s point of view is that of Elena, a Russian assassin for hire, who had presented herself as Miranda in Alex’s hotel room. After being thwarted by Cassie’s presence from executing Alex then, she returned to finish the job but decided not to make collateral damage of his passed-out bedmate, a bad call she must rectify per her sinister handler, Viktor. In the novel’s flabby midsection, Cassie continues to alternately binge-drink and regret the consequences as her lawyer, her union, and even the FBI struggle to protect her from herself. Although Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker, 2017, etc.) strives to render Cassie sympathetic, at times he can’t resist taking a judgmental stance toward her. As Cassie’s addiction becomes the primary focus, the intricate plotting required of an international thriller lags.
The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54241-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?
First in a trilogy by a newcomer publishing house that promises high-class works from Japan.
Ring has sold three million copies in its native country, says Vertical, been filmed there, and the film remade here as a postmodern horror mystery released by DreamWorks as The Ring. In one month in 1990, four Japanese students who live fairly near each other die mysteriously of heart failure. Tomoko Oishi dies in the family kitchen, Shuichi Iwata on his motorcycle while waiting for the light to change at an intersection, and Haruko Tsuji and Takehiko Nomi in the front seat of a car while undressing for sexplay. All four have faces constricted with horror and seem to be pulling their heads off or blinding their vision. Tomoko happens to be the niece of Kazuyuki Asakawa, a journalist, who links all the deaths and sees a story in it. Japanese journalism has been through a heavy period of occult reports, and Asakawa’s editor only hopes it has all died down. A card Asakawa finds in Tomoko’s desk leads him to discover that all four victims had watched a video tape they’d been warned against viewing—a tape, as it happens, that’s something of a virus (in Asakawa, its horrific images cause sweat and shortness of breath). Then comes the message: Those who view these images are fated to die at this exact moment one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly . . . . Then the phone rings (hence Ring) and unspeakable bugs invade Asakawa until he slams down the receiver. Too late, though: he has a week to live. He brings in brainy Ruiji to help him, and Ruiji watches the tape. This stifling sense—is it an evil energy? Then Asakawa’s wife and daughter watch it . . . .
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-932234-00-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Vertical
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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