TO KILL A UNICORN

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.