Patrick Millikin recently hosted Jeffery Deaver, author of The Never Game, and Chris Pavone, author of The Paris Diversion. You can order signed copies of those books, and other books by the authors, through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/
Of course, at The Poisoned Pen, conversations are never just about the book. Check out the video.
Here’s the description of The Never Game.
From the bestselling and award-winning master of suspense, the first novel in a thrilling new series, introducing Colter Shaw.
“You have been abandoned.”
A young woman has gone missing in Silicon Valley and her father has hired Colter Shaw to find her. The son of a survivalist family, Shaw is an expert tracker. Now he makes a living as a “reward seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons. But what seems a simple investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of America’s tech hub and the cutthroat billion-dollar video-gaming industry.
“Escape if you can.”
When another victim is kidnapped, the clues point to one video game with a troubled past–The Whispering Man. In that game, the player has to survive after being abandoned in an inhospitable setting with five random objects. Is a madman bringing the game to life?
“Or die with dignity.”
Shaw finds himself caught in a cat-and-mouse game, risking his own life to save the victims even as he pursues the kidnapper across both Silicon Valley and the dark ‘net. Encountering eccentric game designers, trigger-happy gamers and ruthless tech titans, he soon learns that he isn’t the only one on the hunt: someone is on his trail and closing fast.
The Never Game proves once more why “Deaver is a genius when it comes to manipulation and deception” (Associated Press).
*****
Here’s The Paris Diversion.
“The most clever plot twist of the year.”—Washington Post
“I nominate Kate Moore, the protagonist of Chris Pavone’s sizzling new thriller The Paris Diversion, for patron saint of working wives and mothers everywhere.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“The Paris Diversion is the best espionage novel I’ve read this year. Smart, sophisticated and suspenseful, this is Pavone’s finest novel to date—and that’s saying something.”—Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fool Me Once
“Deliciously twisty . . . This involving work has been skillfully engineered for maximum reader enjoyment.”—The Wall Street Journal
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Expats. Kate Moore is back in a pulse-pounding thriller to discover that a massive terror attack across Paris is not what it seems—and that it involves her family
American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school, makes her rounds of chores, and meets her husband Dexter at their regular café: a leisurely start to a normal day, St-Germain-des-Prés.
Across the Seine, tech CEO Hunter Forsyth stands on his balcony, wondering why his police escort just departed, and frustrated that his cell service has cut out; Hunter has important calls to make, not all of them technically legal.
And on the nearby rue de Rivoli, Mahmoud Khalid climbs out of an electrician’s van and elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum. He sets down his metal briefcase, and removes his windbreaker.
That’s when people start to scream.
Everyone has big plans for the day. Dexter is going to make a small fortune, finally digging himself out of a deep financial hole, via an extremely risky investment. Hunter is going to make a huge fortune, with a major corporate acquisition that will send his company’s stock soaring. Kate has less ambitious plans: preparations for tonight’s dinner party—one of those homemaker obligations she still hasn’t embraced, even after a half-decade of this life—and an uneventful workday at the Paris Substation, the clandestine cadre of operatives that she’s been running, not entirely successfully, increasingly convinced that every day could be the last of her career. But every day is also a fresh chance to prove her own relevance, never more so than during today’s momentous events.
And Mahmoud? He is planning to die today. And he won’t be the only one.