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Loading... Spark: A Novel (2014)by John Twelve Hawks
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. What a strange story. A man, who doesn't really feel alive, doesn't feel much of anything, working as an enforcer and winds up heading back on a path to becoming a human again. By strange, I mean original and compelling. I've read most of John Twelve Hawks' other books and knew his style, but this really surprised me. Surprised and delighted. ( ) John Twelve Hawks is the pseudonym for an author whose identity is still the subject of baseless online speculation. Maybe somebody at Doubleday knows where they are sending the checks, but maybe not. Spark, the fourth book attributed to Twelve Hawks, is set in a near future Manhattan surveillance state. John Davis is a man who developed Cotard’s syndrome following a motorcycle accident. He believes he is dead, a “spark” in a bodily “shell” with no connection to other “human units.” Many of his symptoms resemble those of high-functioning autism. He has been hired as an assassin by a large corporation because he follows directions precisely and feels no emotional connection to his victims. It is fun to watch him outmaneuver all the cameras and scanners. We root for him as he begins to rebuild a bit of his humanity, though it interferes with his efficiency as a killer. In the audiobook edition, Scott Brick does an excellent job of creating an affectless voice for the first-person narrator. Is there a genre label for psycho killers you can root for? 4 stars. I won this book as a Goodreads giveaway, but that had no effect on my review. Jacob Underwood works for the Special Services Section of a large NY investment bank. His job is to take care of problems unconventionally: he is a contract killer. Jacob was recruited by Ms. Holquist, following a near fatal motorcycle accident, in which he was transformed into an unfeeling, unemotional shell that thinks he’s dead (called Cotard's syndrome.) He lives in a society where "Big Brother" watches everyone to detect abnormal behavioral patterns. After a mundane job or two, he is asked to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a banking analyst, who was given some secret information by a guy from India she met at a conference and told to release it if she does not hear from him. As Jacob investigates, he begins to question his instructions, and draws the attention of a rival when he does not follow orders, starting with his refusal to no reviews | add a review
Working as an assassin for a dystopian-era multinational corporation, Jacob Underwood, a man who believes he is an emotionless ghost, confronts baffling truths when he tracks down a second-year associate suspected of stealing company information. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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