Going Zero

February 6, 2023
In screenwriter McCarten’s strong debut, Fusion, a Silicon Valley company led by flawed genius Cy Baxter, is competing for a $90 billion contract to provide the federal government with a massive new surveillance system, promoted as a public good but concealing several nefarious features. To test the system, Fusion picks 10 contestants from the public, gives each a two-hour head start, and promises anyone $3 Emillion if they can stay undetected for 30 days. One builds a hidden room in his house; another holes up in a storage locker; a third tries to blend in with the homeless. One contestant, Boston librarian Kaitlyn Day, does more than hide. On day 28, Kaitlyn stuns Baxter with a zinger: use Fusion’s power to locate her lost husband, believed to have disappeared in Iran three years earlier on a CIA mission, or she’ll reveal the company’s deceptive promises to the government. McCarten taps into the current fascination—and revulsion—with modern advances in facial recognition, AI, and location data, though chase story fans may like more chase and less techno navel-gazing. This is an edgy, compulsively readable thriller. Agent: Jennifer Joel, ICM Partners. (Apr.)This review has been updated to remove a plot spoiler

March 1, 2023
A complex thriller written by a four-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. The American government secretly partners with a firm called Fusion to find ways to identify and locate potential terrorists on American soil. Fusion claims its software can find anyone, anytime, anywhere. Because we aren't China, muses an executive, America's "technology such as this will be deployed only as the need arises." (Oh, sure.) To conduct a beta test, they randomly select 10 applicants from the public who, at a given signal, must try to suddenly disappear and become untraceable. That turns out to be a near impossibility in the 21st century, what with credit cards, cameras, cellphones, and the internet. But the incentive is $3 million, and there is no penalty for being caught beyond hearing that it's time to go home. Everyone thinks they are clever about disappearing, but half of them go home quickly anyway. The focus turns to "Zero 10," aka Kaitlyn Day, a quiet "Boston spinster" and "super-intelligent nutcase" librarian. While she's on the run, she thinks about her friend Warren, who had already disappeared and is maybe being held captive in the Middle East somewhere. She is exceptionally resourceful, as when she falls into a well deep in the woods and seems to have no way out. This is a curious type of thriller, with sparse violence and no outright villains. The excitement is in the chase, which builds steadily. Is Zero 10 going to screw up their proof-of-concept software? The complications build, and the reader had better pay attention. Eventually, the government is looking for Kaitlyn's friend Samantha Crewe instead, and both women have an emotional attachment to the missing Warren, who is Samantha's husband. Meanwhile, is there a real cyberattack to deal with, perhaps the biggest data breach in history? The find-anyone-anywhere premise of the story will become increasingly relevant as the 21st century progresses. Good luck to American society. This well-written yarn proves that you don't have to have a blood bath to have an engaging thriller.

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Starred review from April 15, 2023
McCarten, both a novelist (Spinners) an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (The Theory of Everything), presents a story that is timely, frightening, exciting, suspenseful, and surprising. In a groundbreaking collaboration between private enterprise and the American government, 10 people have been chosen to test a new kind of spyware. Their challenge: to disappear and elude their pursuers, who will be using the most advanced high-tech surveillance tools ever developed, for a month. One of the 10 is Kaitlin Day, a Boston librarian, who leads the spyware's creator, Cy Baxter, on a not-so-merry chase to find her. At stake: Cy's company, his reputation, and millions of dollars in prize money if Kaitlin eludes capture before the deadline expires. But, as it turns out, there's a lot more going on here than a simple cat-and-mouse game. There are a lot of well-crafted characters in the mix, with many of them not who they appear to be, and secrets and neck-wrenching plot twists abound; the reader is never quite sure where the story will go next. The subject of high-tech surveillance has become a hot-button issue, and McCarten cleverly and plausibly extrapolates from today's technology to what we may well see tomorrow. An outstanding thriller.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.