by D.C. Palter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2023
A thrilling crime drama that paints a shrewd portrait of Silicon Valley.
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In this novel, a Silicon Valley programmer searches for his missing best friend and stumbles on the possibility that the startup his pal works for is engaged in a criminal conspiracy.
Ted Hara is surprised when Sumire Yamashita suddenly shows up at his home in Japantown in San Jose—she’s the sister of his childhood friend Ryu as well as an old flame. But she’s not there to rekindle their relationship—she’s convinced Ryu has vanished and wants Ted to help track him down. At first, Ted assumes there’s an innocuous reason for Ryu’s disappearance, but then he discovers some alarming evidence to the contrary. Ryu works for well-funded but oddly secretive startup SüprDüpr and was told to keep his employment there private. These are peculiar facts given the ostentatiously boastful world of Silicon Valley firms, a strange cosmos memorably portrayed by Palter. In addition, Ted hacks into Ryu’s phone and realizes that his account has been deleted—not only has he vanished, but he has done so without even an electronic trace. Moreover, SüprDüpr is nearly inscrutable—despite its low profile, it has amassed hundreds of millions in financing and is quietly buying property in San Jose. Even less comprehensible is the company’s commitment to spend $100 million to build a new shelter for the homeless. In order to investigate further, Ted secures a job as a mathematician at SüprDüpr and discovers that it is building groundbreaking teleportation technology. Ryu’s disappearance may have something to do with his insistence that the tech was plagued by potentially dangerous problems. Even darker, Ted begins to suspect that SüprDüpr’s interest in the homeless population—which is inexplicably decreasing—is more sinister than philanthropic.
Palter artfully juxtaposes two different interpretations of Silicon Valley culture. On the one hand, it is a satirical self-parody of visionary creation, a world in which all of the denizens believe they are on the cusp of transforming the world. As Ted sardonically puts it, “It’s Unicorn Valley. We’re building the future. Reinventing the world. At least that’s what everyone in this town says.” On the other hand, there is a dark underbelly to that desire for breakneck disruption, one that can be nihilistically dismissive of human life, a bleakness Ted confronts. At the heart of the author’s deftly discomfiting tale is the engrossingly complex depiction of Ted—saddened by the death of his parents, he grapples with his loneliness in the same way his father did, through the stupefaction of alcohol. He’s Japanese but also impatiently dismissive of the culture he inherited—he can’t bear to sit thorough the traditional tea ceremony his mother held so dear. In addition, Palter unflinchingly anatomizes the problem of the homeless in Silicon Valley, one that may be intractable precisely because of the contempt so many have for this group. This outburst from Jesus, the chief of police in San Jose, seems aimed at the quiet disdain of many residents: “You think decent people want to live in the middle of their shit? In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a crisis on our hands.” This is an uncommonly captivating novel, one both dramatically gripping and politically uncompromising.
A thrilling crime drama that paints a shrewd portrait of Silicon Valley.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781950627615
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Pandamoon Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by D.C. Palter
by Freida McFadden ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 28, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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by Freida McFadden ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2025
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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