Hooked: A Thriller About Love and Other Addictions » (Bargain)

Matt Richtel has covered technology and telecommunications in the New York Time's San Francisco bureau since 2000. Under the pen name "Theron Heir," he writes the syndicated daily comic strip, Rudy Park, which is published in newspapers around the country. Dubbed by Newsweek as "a contender for comic strip of the decade," Rudy Park revolves around the lives and employees and regulars of an Internet café.

A smart and sophisticated psychological thriller for the Internet age from a talented New York Times technology reporter.

Nat Idle, a San Francisco writer with a medical degree, narrowly survives an explosion in an Internet café just after a stranger hands him a note warning him to exit immediately. The handwriting on the note belongs to his deceased girlfriend, whom he has obsessively been mourning. So begins HOOKED, a thriller for the Internet age, written with the force of an adrenaline rush and the pace of an intimate email dispatch that has you glued to the screen. Listeners will be hooked as Nat searches for the love of his life in the midst of manipulation and conspiracy.

A smart and sophisticated psychological thriller about a young man's search 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. 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)