{"id":3002,"date":"2018-01-19T04:32:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T09:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=3002"},"modified":"2018-01-19T04:50:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T09:50:37","slug":"flashmob-is-a-hot-winter-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/flashmob-is-a-hot-winter-read\/","title":{"rendered":"“Flashmob” is a Hot Winter Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The opening line of Christopher Farnsworth\u2019s clever new international thriller Flashmob<\/em> sounds like something Huck or Charlie might say on Scandal<\/em>: \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to find a nice, quiet spot to torture someone in L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n

The narrator John Smith is actually facing torture when we meet him working \u201cexecutive protection\u201d for a Russian billionaire\u2019s son. But he\u2019d make a great addition to Olivia Pope\u2019s Scandal<\/em> team because of his unique talent. Ex-CIA and Special Forces, this former \u201cpsychic soldier\u201d can read minds. Messy minds, simple minds, and everything in between.<\/p>\n

That means he\u2019s able to anticipate an opponent\u2019s moves; silently interrogate anyone interrogating him; and disarm people just by hitting them with vicious memories or activating parts of their brain to use against them. That\u2019s not all. As Smith puts it: \u201cI\u2019ve got my wired-in proximity alarms, the radar in my head that tells me whenever someone even thinks about doing me harm.\u201d So it\u2019s almost impossible to surprise him or sneak up on him.<\/p>\n

Almost. Otherwise there\u2019d be no thrills, right?<\/p>\n

But all that knowledge comes with a price. It leaves him with a physical and psychic burden he can only ease by heavy doses of Scotch and Vicodin\u2014and even Valium and OxyContin on top of the mix on a really bad day. Reading and manipulating minds is a curse as much as a gift. Other people\u2019s thoughts, memories, and feelings stick to him like he\u2019s some kind of emotional fly paper and he powerfully describes it at one point as something far more disgusting. Still, while he may be a freak of nature, there\u2019s no way you won\u2019t empathize with him because he\u2019s not a psychopath, he\u2019s one of the good guys.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reviewing crime fiction since the 90s in print, on air, and on line and it\u2019s almost a clich\u00e9 for authors to make their protagonists wounded in some way. Contemporary readers want their sleuths to be touched by darkness. In this case, it\u2019s Smith\u2019s amazing strength that profoundly weakens him at times. That offers a very original twist in a creepy tale about stalking, social media madness, celebrity, the Dark Net, privacy in the digital age, Internet cruelty, cyber crime, and mob psychosis.<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s also a screenwriter and journalist, which is a bit surprising, because the book could have used less exposition and tighter flashbacks. In effect, Smith is an omniscient narrator and while it\u2019s intriguing to see him navigate \u201cthe competing agendas\u201d inside people\u2019s minds, sometimes his excursions into other characters are a drag on the plot\u2019s momentum. Conversely, his descriptions of places and people lack color.<\/p>\n

But in the end, none of that detracts from the deft story-telling and the explosive finale which made me think of master thriller writer Joseph Finder. Flashmob<\/em> is truly disturbing. It\u2019s one thing to worry about computer programs that can perform highly intrusive surveillance on you, it\u2019s another to think of people who can insidiously do the exact same thing mentally while drinking a cappuccino just a few tables away from you at Starbucks.<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael\u2019s Nick Hoffman mysteries<\/a> explore the terrors of academia. He\u2019s reviewed books for the Washington Post<\/em>, the Detroit Free Press<\/em>, Jerusalem Report<\/em>, Huffington Post<\/em> and three public radio stations.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opening line of Christopher Farnsworth\u2019s clever new international thriller Flashmob sounds like something Huck or Charlie might say on Scandal: \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to find a nice, quiet spot to torture someone in L.A.\u201d The narrator John Smith is actually facing torture when we meet him working \u201cexecutive protection\u201d for a Russian billionaire\u2019s son. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[877],"tags":[875,518,5,984,219,983,978,977,981,982,980,979,506,976,501],"class_list":["post-3002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-book-review","tag-book-reviews","tag-books","tag-christopher-farnsworth","tag-crime-fiction","tag-cyber-crime","tag-dark-web","tag-flashmob","tag-huck","tag-internet-trolling","tag-olivia-pope","tag-scandal","tag-social-media","tag-thriller","tag-thrillers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3002"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3009,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions\/3009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}