A raucously entertaining actioner with a sting of social satire.
A disgraced politician, a soldier of fortune, and a suburban mom take on a conspiracy to wreck civilization in this series-starting thriller.
Bond’s surprisingly plausible story envisions an America that’s been destabilized by the Blind Mice, a group of hacker anarchists bent on destroying corporations. Battling them on behalf of the American Dynamics conglomerate are security contractors Quaid Rafferty, a former Massachusetts governor who was impeached over a relationship with a sex worker, and his associate Durwood Oak Jones, a straight-arrow ex-Marine from Appalachia. They recruit Molly McGill, a single mom and private eye in New Jersey, to infiltrate the Mice. This requires her to become a celebrated left-leaning blogger and then navigate the collective’s Byzantine security protocols and tattoo rituals. Molly finds their leader Josiah, a young prophet given to long-winded rants against the system, to be a little “Crazy,” and their member Piper Jackson, a hacktivist trying to rescue her brother from an unjust prison sentence, to be idealistic. The Mice’s insurrection darkens when Josiah murders a health-management company executive and Piper unleashes a computer virus that wipes out most of the world’s data. The novel then swerves towards a more gonzo dystopia as chaos erupts, governments crumble, biker gangs set up highway checkpoints, and Fabienne Rivard, a dastardly Frenchwoman with ties to both the Mice and Quaid, positions her own sinister conglomerate to take over the world. Quaid, Durwood, and Molly duly target her Paris headquarters—a cross between a postmodern office park, a cutting-edge tech lab, and a medieval dungeon—where they face not only Fabienne’s minions, but also her organization’s bizarre scientific experiments.
Bond’s yarn, the first in his Third Chance Enterprises series, features crackerjack action scenes as well as a sly parody of the symbiosis between activist movements and the corporatocracy, all in vividly evocative prose: “His bones didn’t seem quite to fit, elbows and knees jangling liquidly,” Molly observes of the oddly charismatic Josiah. “He was impossible to look away from, his gait hypnotic, his kaleidoscopic limbs slashing the space between us.” The characters are colorful but rendered with complex nuance: Quaid, for example, is an obsequious, morally flexible showboat who’s confident that he can talk his way out of almost any situation; Durwood is a laconic technician with moral rectitude that can be too unyielding. Bond’s writing is well observed and engrossing in a range of registers, from tough-guy posturing—“I expect you’re wishing you had what hangs in my right trouser holster: a Webley top-break .455 caliber revolver”—to the perpetual uproar of Molly’s home life: “It started out smoky when I burned an omelet, distracted by the cat’s pre-vomit hacking in the hall. Then Zach and Granny had a pointless argument about when an egg became a chicken.” Even Durwood’s hound dog, Sue-Ann, makes an indelibly wheezy and sad-eyed impression. Faced with a world coming apart at the seams, Bond’s characters stitch it back together with a DIY verve that readers will likely find captivating.
A raucously entertaining actioner with a sting of social satire.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73225-527-2
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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