A bracing revenge tale with a strong cast.
A novel revolves around a genius computer geek who desires vengeance for the death of his best friend—a man essentially killed by relentless, greedy lawyers battling to possess his revolutionary work in data mining and analysis.
Gregory Portnoy and Joseph Leege, who have been best friends since childhood, attend MIT in the late 1980s. There, they work together on a highly profitable video game, one of the first split-screen games ever to be played over a modem. With a small group of computer mastermind friends, they start doing work for businesses focusing on internet security and efficiency as well as trading stocks on the internet. But as the best friends rise to the strata of up-and-coming internet innovators, the two have a fundamental difference of opinion. The idealistic and highly sensitive Leege thinks software should be free for all of the world to use, while Portnoy believes owning and selling it to approved companies is the path to take. The two eventually go their separate ways—Portnoy struggling to come to grips with losing the love of his life, a young woman named Chana. When Portnoy discovers that Leege is dead—largely because of incessant legal bullying from a group of attorneys—he sets out to avenge his friend. But Portnoy is not alone: He has someone—or something—helping him who is close to omnipotent. Trial lawyer Buschel’s second novel (after 2016’s By Silent Majority) is a page-turning blend of SF, legal thriller, and financial crime drama. (Think John Grisham meets Isaac Asimov and Bernie Madoff in a bar for drinks.) There’s a lot to love here—the seamless fusion of SF and science facts is compelling, as are the well-developed characters, all of whom possess their own insecurities and flaws. Portnoy’s tumultuous relationship with Chana is an impressively rich subplot. The one minor criticism concerns the bulk of legalese (bankruptcy law, etc.)—while relatively interesting, some of it isn’t critical to the storyline and slows down the momentum.
A bracing revenge tale with a strong cast.Pub Date: March 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68433-892-4
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.
A Wallace & Gromit dream is more of a nightmare in this darkly farcical science fantasy in which the moon inexplicably becomes…well, not green, but decidedly dairy.
When the moon and every lunar sample on Earth transform into a cheese-like substance, it seems amusing at first, but the appearance of this newly organic, extremely unstable satellite has far-reaching, apocalyptic consequences. A variety of U.S. citizens—disappointed astronauts from newly cancelled lunar missions, scientists whose understanding of the universe has been entirely upended, writers frantically adapting their pitches, retirees at a rural diner finding solace in their friendship, a small church community looking for divine answers, bickering cheese-shop owners whose product gets both welcome and unwelcome attention, the ultra-wealthy owner of an aerospace company with a spectacularly self-involved agenda, bank executives seeking a financial angle, and government officials desperately scheduling press conferences—respond in ways grand and petty, generous and self-serving. Those responses can only escalate when a cheesy lunar fragment threatens to destroy all life on our planet. Scalzi’s premise is absurd, but it’s merely the pretext to take a multifaceted, satiric look at how Americans deal with large-scale crisis, something we’re abundantly and recently familiar with, and will no doubt experience again in the not-so-distant future. He writes of denial, conspiracy theories, anger directed at the wrong people, unscrupulous political machinations, and multiple attempts at profiting from the end of the world, for as long as it lasts. There are moments of unexpected kindness and generosity, too. Of course, Scalzi takes aim at his favorite corporate, social, and government targets, as well as at the cheap sentiment that crisis always seems to inspire (as exemplified by a catastrophic Saturday Night Live episode).
A ridiculous concept imbued with gravity, charm, humor, plausible cynicism, and pathos—and perhaps the merest touch of spite.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780765389091
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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