A taut tale of a global attack that’s both gripping and frighteningly plausible.
In this techno-thriller, a Russian oligarch’s elaborate cyberplan threatens to generate chaos on a worldwide scale.
When Washington, D.C., reporter Rebecca Taft covertly meets with a hacker, all she has to show for it is a cryptic list of dates. But she quickly realizes the dates correspond with terrorist strikes, and the latest two imply future attacks. She gives the information to U.S. government agencies, which already have some intel. Agents, for one, have their eyes on shady American attorney Frank Cooper, who recently met with arms dealer Philippe Lamont. But the U.S. wants Cooper’s boss, a Russian whom the agencies have yet to identify. Readers know he’s Constantine Petrenko, who’s spearheading the planned assaults. The Russian has numerous people in his employ, though the most alarming may be Paula Janković. The hacker is in the process of perfecting The Selfish Ledger, which amasses individuals’ data in order to predict and even control behavior. Despite the fact that Taft and the U.S. agencies know the specific date of the first strike, they’re oblivious as to where or what it will be. And no one in any country is prepared for the full extent of the attack. Though character discourse constitutes the bulk of Wood’s (Asshole Attorney, 2018, etc.) novel, the story moves at a frantic pace. This is primarily due to perpetually shifting perspectives, as Petrenko’s scheme involves a multitude of players. Regardless, some characters stand out, particularly sleazy Cooper, who drinks martinis at any time of the day, and Janković, whose skills at digital manipulation make her more menacing than Petrenko. Exhilarating action finally emerges once the tale reaches the anticipated date, which entails surprising deaths among established characters. But the most unsettling aspect of Wood’s story is its believability; not only is The Selfish Ledger a real-life concept, but the villains’ easy manipulation of people via social media is a convincing turn. The ending, though definitive, leaves room for a sequel.
A taut tale of a global attack that’s both gripping and frighteningly plausible.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73352-531-2
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Plum Bay Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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