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. Nat 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. Nat tracks down survivors of the blast, including waitress Erin Coultran, whose actions make Nat suspicious; when the home of aspiring novelist Simon Anderson, another survivor, catches on fire, Nat's suspicions intensify. Nat's investigations take him to Strawberry Labs, Annie's family company possibly named after Annie's childhood Labrador retriever. Despite intentionally short chapters à la The Da Vinci Code, Richtel (who writes the comic strip Rudy Park under nom de plume Theron Heir) has trouble bringing Nat to life or tension to the plot--in part because of Nat's first-person flashbacks to his relationship with Annie. Richtel's trying to do a brainy update of classic noir, but falls slightly short.(June)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Kirkus Reviews
Corporate shenanigans drive this erratic suspense novel, Richtel's debut. Narrator Nat Idle is a young medical journalist in San Francisco. His greatest professional accomplishment has been an article which led to the conviction of a cop for assaulting a prostitute. His personal accomplishment was snagging Annie Kindle, a dynamic investment banker working for her father, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist; alas, Annie died in a drowning accident four years ago, and Nat still feels the pain. He's sitting in a cafe when a woman drops a note on his table telling him to get out. He does; seconds later, the cafe explodes. The weirdest part is that the note was in Annie's handwriting. Nat is unhurt, though the explosion killed five people. It's not a comfort that the investigation is being led by the brother of the cop he'd had convicted. Richtel keeps the pace fast, mixing flashbacks to Annie and her hard-nosed father with Nat's own sleuthing, aided by Erin, a waitress at the cafe and another survivor; she appears on the up and up, but has a complicated history involving arson. We get a little bit of everything (romantic interludes, dangerous house fires, mysteriously encrypted computer programs) but not enough of anything; characterizations are paper-thin. Credibility breaks down when Nat's acupuncture session with Samantha, a New Age healer, is interrupted by two rogue cops looking for a laptop. Next thing you know, they're subdued by "a blonde with a gun." They're not heard from again, and the blonde remains shadowy. Then Nat picks up the phone and hears Annie's voice; evidently she'd faked her death to avoid SEC and IRS bloodhounds. The rest of the novel has Nat realizing, afterencountering her in the flesh, that Annie's much harder than he'd thought; proof comes during a showdown in Vegas (again, too little detail) as a conspiracy to entrap computer users goes down the tubes. Slight and unimaginativeAgent: Laurie Liss/Sterling Lord Literistic Inc.
OCT/NOV 07 - AudioFile
Moments before the cafe he is sitting in blows up, Nat Idle is told to get out by someone who resembles his dead ex-girlfriend, Annie. With his life intact, the journalist in him yearns to put the pieces together. In his pursuit, his answers only yield more questions; further, he discovers that his body and mind are quickly deteriorating. As comprehension dawns, he may be out of time. Jason Singer's soft, determined voice works well for this first-person narration. Though his voices for female and secondary characters aren’t noteworthy, he captures Idle's character well. The abridgment, however, seems to have hollowed out the story, especially as its reaches its climax and denouement. L.E. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
