Day One

July 8, 2013
Machines turn on their users in this uneven and occasionally sloppy apocalyptic thriller set in a near-future New York City. John Hawke’s career as a reporter has hit the skids, and his hopes for a return to professional respectability hang on getting the scoop on a new breakthrough in quantum computing. That ambition is derailed after the U.S. Department of Justice’s Web servers are taken down, which proves to be the prologue to technological mayhem on a wide scale. Billions in assets are erased on the stock market, sending the world economy into free fall, and explosions across the city lead the mayor to declare a state of emergency. Kenyon (Sparrow Rock) maintains tension well enough as Hawke battles to get to his developmentally challenged child and pregnant wife in New Jersey, but the plot plays out predictably and is staffed by characters who lack dimension. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

September 15, 2013
Malevolent computer intelligence aims to take down humanity in this apocalyptic thriller set in New York City, from the author of Diablo III: The Order (2012, etc.). Former hacker John Hawke's career as a reporter is going nowhere, and he's pinning his hopes on getting a big story from Jim Weller of Manhattan Internet security firm Conn.ect, Inc. Suddenly, however, computer systems everywhere go down; bank accounts empty, the stock market crashes; millions die as bridges and tunnels collapse, cars try to kill their occupants, trains derail, power plants explode, buildings lock themselves. What's going on? Weller admits that his former company, Eclipse, ripped him off by stealing his project for developing an artificial intelligence, and it seems as though the AI has completed its own programming and broken out--with hostile intent. And pretty soon, it's clear that the cops have been instructed to shoot Weller and anyone associated with him on sight. Kenyon maintains the tension and excitement competently enough as Hawke battles to return to Hoboken, where his developmentally challenged child and pregnant wife are threatened by a psycho neighbor, but don't expect the plot to do much else. Before reaching this point, however, Kenyon lays the foreboding on with a trowel and reiterates ad nauseam in flashback/anxiety attacks just how much Hawke loves his wife and son, and he won't endear himself to New Yorkers by describing a Hoboken-to-Manhattan PATH ride in which he gets details wrong. Occasionally thrilling but not very credible and full of blunders.

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Starred review from August 1, 2013
John Hawke, who was a hotshot technology reporter until an ethical transgression got him booted from his regular job, now scrambles for freelance assignments. And he thinks he's got a doozy: a profile of James Weller, who used to run a tech company, Eclipse, whichor so the rumors gostole Weller's idea for a revolutionary invention in computing and is now poised to reveal exactly what that invention is. But then several things happen in New York that make an interview with Weller seem less urgent. Things like any device with a networked computer chip suddenly behaving oddly, even murderously. Things like panic in the streets, explosions, mass destruction. Soon New York City is cut off from the rest of the world, and Hawke must somehow make his way to New Jersey and rescue his terrified family, not to mention figure out what, if any, connection Weller's invention might have to everything that's going on. This is a highly imaginative thriller with solidly built characters and a story that, if it weren't told so well, might have seemed silly (coffee makers and photocopiers going berserk?). Exciting and inventive stuff.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)