Hooked
A Thriller About Love and Other Addictions
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3.9 • 17 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Nat Idle, a San Francisco writer with a medical degree, narrowly survives an explosion in an Internet cafe after a stranger hands him a note warning him to exit immediately.
The handwriting on the note belongs to his deceased girlfriend, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whom he has obsessively been mourning. So begins Hooked, a pop thriller for the Internet Age, written with the force of an adrenaline rush and the pace of an intimate email dispatch you can't stop reading. Each chapter of this novel will keep readers hooked as Nat Idle searches for the love of his life in the midst of manipulation and conspiracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This oddly flat thriller from first-time novelist Richtel opens with a warning in a dead girlfriend's handwriting, followed by an explosion in a San Francisco cafe. Matt Idle, who barely escapes, is perplexed by the note: his girlfriend Annie from a very wealthy family involved in various opaque concerns was swept off her sailboat four years ago and never seen again. Matt tracks down survivors of the blast, including waitress Erin Coultra, whose actions make Matt suspicious; when the home of aspiring novelist Simon Anderson, another survivor, catches on fire, Matt's suspicions intensify. Matt's investigations take him to Strawberry Labs, Annie's family company possibly named after Annie's childhood Labrador retriever that may be doing drug-related business. Despite intentionally short chapters la The Da Vinci Code, Richter (who writes the comic strip Rudy Park under nom de plume Theron Heir) has trouble bringing Matt to life or tension to the plot in part because of Matt's first-person flashbacks to his relationship with Annie. Richtel's trying to do a brainy update of classic noir, but falls slightly short.
