Reader's Notebook, 9/30/26
Nearshore - Steve Hawk After struggling for nearly two weeks with my previous book, I got back onto a proper pace with this, knocking it out in just two days. Colson Whitehead’s book was the more prestigious read, this was the more enjoyable one.
I’m not sure whether to label this as a techno-thriller, a pre-apocalyptic thriller, a nuclear thriller, or what. It also has elements of surfer culture. And heavily skewers the weird tech billionaires who have taken over our country. Steve Hawk smashes all that together into a properly tense novel.
Jamie Palmer, a California state parks lifeguard, is tasked with investigating a boat that has gone rouge, spinning in circles, out-of-control, off the coast of San Francisco. When he arrives he confirms the worst: it is his best friend’s boat, and both his friend and his teenage son are missing. He quickly finds the boy, injured but alive, but his friend is lost and eventually confirmed dead days later.
Palmer’s friend was a professor at Stanford and was working, with his research assistant, on a project that had uncovered a weird set of communications within one of the biggest tech companies in the world. That chatter lined up with a recent nuclear, terrorist attack in the US. Soon his assistant finds another peak in this strange communication, which comes right before a second terrorist attack. She and Palmer begin working with a few friends he has in Federal law enforcement and uncover an even bigger attack.
This was a first-class page turner. Hawk definitely did his research on the technological aspects of his story. As a child of the Eighties, my interest is always piqued by tales of potential nuclear holocaust. Hawk is also a former editor of Surfer magazine, so he knows how to speak the lingo of that world. There’s something about surfer lit that pleases my brain. Here’s one passage that stuck out:
The forecast called for a south swell kicked up by an off-season storm down near the Tasman Sea. The morning tide was high and getting higher and there was a touch of northwest windswell in the water to break up the southern walls.
Surfers get a bad rap for talking like Jeff Spicoli, but we know the ones who are truly in touch with the waves can describe them like this.
My Sister, the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite You might look at that title and laugh. I think I did the first time I saw it. While the book definitely has some dark humor elements, it is not a comedy. It is about exactly what the title says.
Korede and Ayoola are sisters who live in Lagos, Nigeria. Korede is a nurse, who works hard, is successful, and is the rock her family (mom and sister only) lean on. While Korede is not ugly, she pales in comparison to her dazzling sister Ayoola. Men swoon the moment Ayoola walks in the door. For example, the doctor Korede works with and has a secret crush on basically forgets she exists the first time he sees Ayoola. Soon he is pursuing her, much to Korede’s chagrin.
One problem: Ayoola’s exes have a habit of turning up dead when she tires of them. How they get dead is the important part: Ayoola murders them. She then calls Korede to clean up the literal mess for her.
When her co-worker begins dating Ayoola, Korede is both jealous that her sister is getting his attentions and worried that when she gets bored, he will end up dead like the rest. Her attempts to warn the doctor are turned back on her, with Dr. Dreamy sharing that Ayoola told him Korede would try to split them up, sharing lies about how terribly Korede treats her at home.
Does this lead to another inevitable end, in which Korede swoops in to save her sister? Maybe…
With this completed, if my math is correct, it becomes entry #1000 on my Reading List page. That count is not precise: surely I missed a book or two along the way. And the first section of that page, which covers 2007-2009, was built based on memory and a few scattered notes, so hardly a comprehensive record of that period. And what about all the books I read before that?
Anyway, a bit of a milestone, even if it is more ceremonial than certain.