Shadowed

April 11, 2016
Olson’s tense second Nicole Jones mystery (after 2015’s Hidden) finds the ex-hacker fugitive living on an island in the St. Lawrence River in Quebec’s Charlevoix region. Her latest alias is artist Susan McQueen. Addicted to her laptop, Nicole/Susan becomes the victim of an online ransom attack. Either she delivers a million bitcoins to her shadower or he’ll hunt down friends she left behind in the U.S. At an electronics store in Quebec City, where she goes regularly to sell her art, she encounters Alice, a hacker working for the Canadian cybercrime police, who steers her on a harrowing journey that involves being smuggled back into the U.S. As she struggles to pay the ransom, she’s supported by Tracker, an anonymous online ally. For someone who can find a hacker forum on the dark web, Nicole/Susan is surprisingly ignorant about bitcoins. Still, an unexpected discovery—and abrupt conclusion—will leave readers wondering what she’ll do in the next installment. Agent: Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler.

April 1, 2016
An addicted hacker can't outrun her past. Susan McQueen is just the latest of the many names Tina Adler has used to hide from her past. As a brash young hacker, she helped her father steal a great deal of money, some of which belonged to his erstwhile friend, mobster Tony DeMarco. She also hacked for Ian Cartwright, her former lover, and shot an FBI agent who was in love with her. After many years of hiding herself on Block Island, where she went without a computer and built deep friendships, her past caught up with her (Hidden, 2015, etc), and she had to flee and reinvent herself as artist Susan McQueen, who lives on a remote island in Quebec. Unable to stay offline, she gets a threatening note from someone who's hacked her computer demanding that she put $1 million in bitcoins into Tony DeMarco's account or her friends will be hurt. Over the years she's always counted on a person she knows only as Tracker, a hacker she meets in chat rooms who's always helped her, though she still doesn't trust him completely. On a trip to Quebec City with a friend who helps sell her paintings, Susan plans to buy another computer and try to rid hers of the shadow the hacker has planted. In an effort to help her, the store owner brings in someone who works for the cybercrime unit, the daughter of a retired police officer. Spooked, Susan realizes that she'll have to disappear again with nothing but her two computers and a backpack with some clothes and some cash she carries for just such an emergency. With Tracker's help in finding and moving the money, she goes on the run, but this time it won't be so easy to escape. The second in this electrifying series is an addictive page-turner with a stunner of a finale.

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May 1, 2016
Nicole Jones, a computer hacker who's had a rough time lately (see Hidden, 2015), is hiding out from the FBI in Quebec, living under an assumed namea second assumed name, since Nicole Jones isn't her real name, eitherand trying very hard to stay off the grid. But she allows herself a brief time every day on her laptop, including at least one human contact in the digital world. When she receives a message from an unknown individual, who seems to know who she is and is threatening her with possible exposure, she's forced to reenter a world that both excites and terrifies her. Jones is a well-rounded, many-sided charactershe's a hacker, a reformed thief, a biker, a painter, daughter of a convicted financial fraudsterand her latest adventure is suspenseful and surprising. Nicole's travails aren't as harrowing as those of crime fiction's most well-known laptop-wielding heroine, Lisbeth Salander, but anyone who enjoys the staccato rhythms emanating from a skilled hacker's keyboard will be tapping their toes to this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)