A fast-paced but credulity-straining tale.
A police officer investigates a sinister computer program that targets “unfit” people for assassination in this thriller.
A programmer known as Vortmit describes his creation, Clean, as follows: “If the program acquires enough information to declare somebody guilty and unfit for society….That person will die. It might look like a car accident, or a suicide, or a mugging, but the result will be the same. And the Clean program will be behind it,” hiring hitmen or blackmailing others to carry out its missions. In just one week, Clean has been responsible for 1,312 deaths, with more to come. Vortmit’s convoluted scheme involves using the program to ensnare Donald Trump–like New York gubernatorial candidate Carson Miller, who’s running on a platform of cleaning up “the cultural dumpster that America has become.” A police officer named Peggy knows Clean’s terrifying power firsthand; it blackmailed her into killing her own brother, who had a connection to Vortmit—and then her name was added to Clean’s database. She teams up with an FBI agent named Finley to try to shut it down. Lytes’ series launch is part-Westworld in its depiction of deadly technology and part–Black Mirror in its reflections on the power that technology has over our lives: “Why do we put so many decisions into the hands of computers?” Peggy says at one point, in a statement that’s a little too on-the-nose. “To keep us safe? Make our decisions?” It’s never made clear what Vortmit’s motives are for unleashing Clean on the world: “Clean has always been about money,” he says to himself at one point. “And that money will give me the power I need to do what I want.” But what he actually wants is vague. Several characters operate under aliases, which further complicates the narrative, and it frustratingly takes Peggy and company the entire book to make connections that the author reveals to readers early on. Still, the story has a propulsive energy and some neat turns of phrase, such as “mantle count”—the number of constituents at a campaign event who want photographs with a candidate.
A fast-paced but credulity-straining tale.Pub Date: July 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-6823-1
Page Count: 418
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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