Flashmob

Starred review from May 8, 2017
The main elements of Farnsworth’s brilliant second thriller featuring the man known as John Smith (after 2016’s Killfile) would individually be enough to sustain interest; the combination of a telepathic lead and a terrifyingly plausible effort to use the Internet for social manipulation produces intelligent and knuckle-biting suspense. After 9/11, Smith has served his country by reading the thoughts of terrorists and planting painful sensations in their minds. He’s confronted with an even greater challenge when he becomes a private security consultant. After witnessing the attempted shooting of a reality TV personality in the middle of her wedding at a Santa Monica, Calif., hotel, Smith learns the disturbing truth behind the violence. The investigating FBI agent, Greg Vincent, shares his suspicions that the crime was caused by a website called Downvote. The site, which encourages the worst in humanity, features the “most hated people on the Internet at any given moment” and produces a de facto hit list that some of its visitors have already acted on. Farnsworth credibly ups the ante for his hero and makes accepting his paranormal abilities easy. Many will want to read this novel in one sitting. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM.

May 1, 2017
John Smith, the mind-reading crime fighter introduced in Killfile (2016), goes up against Downvote, a darknet site that incites violence against targeted individuals.The victims range from gay rights activists to stuck-up cheerleaders to media types. The latest target is pouty reality TV star Kira Sadeghi, who's gunned down at her wedding. Smith, a former CIA special ops man working for a secret Los Angeles-based organization, has a personal stake in the case. Kira, whom he saved from kidnappers a year ago, went to bed with him a few weeks before her wedding--and, more important, treated him with unexpected tenderness when he was wracked by the convulsions he gets after using his power to implant dire fears in his opponents ("I get back a percentage of everything I inflict"). After visiting the offshore yacht where Aaric Stack, billionaire inventor of an anonymous cash transfer app, evades the feds, Smith determines they're wrong in thinking Stack is the man behind Downvote. Teaming up with Stack's fetching and ferocious bodyguard, Smith tracks down the real culprit. The trail leads them to Reykjavik, Bucharest, Hong Kong, and Laos, lands them in jail, and exposes them to physical punishment. Sometimes, even Smith's powers can't stop the bad guys from hitting him in the head really hard. This is another entertaining performance by Farnsworth, who brings an edgy sense of humor to the proceedings. But Smith's freakish skills aren't quite as impressive the second time around, and the plot doesn't exert the same pull. More could be made of the flash-mob concept. Farnsworth's follow-up to Killfile is a smooth, assured effort but lacks some of the first book's excitement--partly because the methods and mentality of its strangely gifted protagonist have lost some of their freshness.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2017
John Smith, the uniquely talented fixer introduced in Killfile (2016), returns. This time he is up against a clever and anonymous villain who runs a website, Downvote, which puts prices on celebrities' heads. Finding a guy who doesn't want to be found is never an easy task, but John has an extraordinary gift: he can read minds. Not only that, he can influence people's thoughts, can even plant his own thoughts in their heads. So, from one mind to another, Smith tracks down the bad guy by stealing the one thing people think can never be stolen: their thoughts. Farnsworth, best known for the President's Vampire series (which began with 2010's Blood Oath), is a genuinely gifted storyteller, able to take a fantastic premise and build onto it a story that feels not just plausible but completely natural. We totally believe that John Smith is a real person (it helps that the story is told in the first person), and we totally believe that he really can read minds. A fine genre-bender.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)