Thriller
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Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
Jason Dessen is a perfectly ordinary physics professor living a perfectly ordinary life in Chicago, which in thriller terms means he is about three pages away from everything going catastrophically wrong. One night, Jason is kidnapped by a man wearing a creepy mask. Jason wakes up to discover that reality has hit shuffle. He’s no longer a mild-mannered professor; instead, he’s a world-famous physicist who invented a miraculous device known as “the Box”, which can access alternate universes. As Jason tumbles through realities—many of them lethal—he learns an important lesson: the multiverse is infinite, but most versions of Chicago end badly for you. Also, running while confused is a surprisingly…
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The Talented Mr Ripley
Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr Ripley is the uplifting tale of what can happen if you combine ambition, envy, and a truly flexible sense of identity. It moves from the United State to Italy, and Italy, naturally, is dazzling. There is sun. There is wine. There are linen shirts fluttering meaningfully in coastal breezes. Dickie Greenleaf lives in a picturesque seaside town, painting mediocre art and doing absolutely nothing productive, which Tom finds both appalling and intoxicating. What makes the novel deliciously unsettling is that Tom is not a snarling villain. He is polite. He appreciates good tailoring. He worries about being discovered the way most people worry about being late to…
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The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown
“With puzzles that would make a Sudoku champion roll their eyes” A 4-minute unserious review of Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code. The briefest, sharpest, funniest (hopefully) and, of course, critical literary critique (hmm…) providing everything you need to know about the Illuminati and the mysteries of Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu.
