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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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