This melding of SF and financial manipulation creates an appealing, if overcrowded, thriller.
An SF financial thriller set in the near future focuses on a shady firm.
Rogers follows up his previous work, Fatal Score (2018), with this novel featuring the return of Louise “Weezy” Napolitani and Joe Mayfield. In the opening pages, Joe is at a job interview at the financial firm of Zhou, Cadwallon, and Gordon. Joe is famous in many circles for his computer trickery that garnered headlines. Still, the men in control of ZCG are not easy to impress. Most candidates possess Ivy League degrees and family connections; Joe has neither. Nevertheless, he gets hired and soon learns about the company’s main product known as “Skins.” The term refers to “a basket of financial derivatives designed to offset risk at the geographical source of a commodity.” What Joe doesn’t yet know are the lengths to which the company will go to make sure it controls the risks involved in its investments or how dastardly some of his superiors truly are. Good thing Joe has Weezy on his side. Weezy is both beautiful and has an IQ of 160+. She also has an important job with the government and the computer know-how to investigate ZCG. Of course, Joe and Weezy still find themselves buckled up for a bumpy ride. Communication implants, foldable electronic devices, and self-driving cars all play small but noticeable roles in this version of a not-too-distant world. Such technology is woven skillfully into Rogers’ narrative. The high-tech atmosphere never overshadows the timeless quality that fuels the action: human greed. And the main motivation of avarice and those willing to do anything for their own benefit produce some engaging friction. But the plethora of characters can at times be distracting. For instance, readers learn of Joe’s various co-workers early on. These players, despite their thinning ponytails or lengthy names, wind up being of little to no importance. In a similar vein, the late entry of a posse of hackers (with online handles like “Motormouth”) does not add much to the excitement. Yet all in all, Joe’s intriguing struggles prove just how violent, controlling, and downright dangerous even an advanced world can be.
This melding of SF and financial manipulation creates an appealing, if overcrowded, thriller.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.
Having been falsely convicted of murder himself years ago, prosecutor Rusty Sabich defies common wisdom in defending his romantic partner’s adopted son against the same accusation.
Now 76, Rusty has retired to the (fictitious) Skageon Region in the upper Midwest, far removed from Kindle County, Turow’s Chicago stand-in, where he was a star attorney and judge. Aaron Housley, a Black man raised in a bleached rural environment, has had his troubles, including serving four months for holding drugs purchased by Mae Potter, his erratic, on-and-off girlfriend. Now, after suddenly disappearing to parts unknown with her, he returns alone. When days go by without Mae’s reappearance, it is widely assumed that Aaron harmed her. Why else would he be in possession of her phone? Following the discovery of Mae’s strangled body and incriminating evidence that points to Aaron, Rusty steps in. Opposed in court by the uncontrollable, gloriously named prosecutor Hiram Jackdorp, he fears he’s in a lose-lose situation. If he fails to get Aaron off, which is highly possible, the boy’s mother, Bea, will never forgive him. If Rusty wins the case, the quietly detached Bea—who, like half the town, has secrets—will have trouble living with the unsparing methods Rusty uses to free Aaron. In attempting to match, or at least approach, the brilliance of his groundbreaking masterpiece Presumed Innocent (1987), Turow has his own odds to overcome. No minor achievement like a previous follow-up, Innocent (2010), the new novel is a powerful display of straightforward narrative, stuffed with compelling descriptions of people, places, and the legal process. No one stages courtroom scenes better than this celebrated Chicago attorney. But the book, whose overly long scenes add up to more than 500 pages, mostly lacks the gripping intensity and high moral drama to keep those pages turning. It’s an absorbing and entertaining read, but Turow’s fans have come to expect more than that.
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538706367
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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