This novel started off great, but turned into a muddled mess at the end.
Nat Idle is a journalist who writes primarily about medical issues. He used to be in medical school, but was too idealistic to go into medicine after he finished. He also used to date Annie Kindle, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley who worked for her father the legendary Glenn Kindle. Only thing was, after about a year of dating Nat, Annie died in a tragic boating accident and Nat has been mourning her for four years. At the beginning of the story, Nat is sitting in a café working on a story. Someone steps into the café and hands him a note telling him to leave the cafe, but takes off before he can get a good look at her. He follows her before he even reads the note, because he thinks she looks like Annie. Then the café blows up. Then Nat looks at the handwriting and it looks an awful lot like Annie’s. Thus begins our mystery. Is Annie alive? And what’s with blowing up cafés?
Richtel’s chapters are short and punchy. Like the title of the book, they usually end with a hook. Not always something big enough to be a cliffhanger, but something to get the reader to the next chapter. There are 60 chapters in a 289 page book, which averages to just under 5 pages per chapter. Everything moves along very very quickly.
The first half of the book is pretty damn good. About half-way through, Richtel reveals who warned Nat. I won’t spoil it for you. It could be Annie. It could be an imposter. But from that point on things fell apart. A café waitress becomes implicated. So does another customer. As do most of the cops doing the investigating. The thing that irritated me though was that the whole reason for the bad guy’s actions just doesn’t make a lot of sense. The bombing is a cover-up (again, of what or why I won’t spoil it). But if you want to cover something up, you don’t do it in a convoluted and high-profile bombing. The holes just get worse from there. Not to mention there’s just a whole lot of coincidence involved in the whole thing. If you’ve read any of my previous reviews of mysteries, you know I hate when coincidence is needlessly used in this genre.
The short summary is that I really like Richtel’s writing style. I will most likely pick up his next book. The beginning was good enough to make me want to try whatever he writes next in the hopes that he’s learned how to end a novel better.
Title: Hooked: a thriller about love and other addictions
Author: Matt Richtel
Imprint / publisher: Twelve / Hachette
Format: Hardcover
Length: 289 p.
Publication date: June 2007
ISBN-10: 0-446-58008-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-446-58008-3
Subject: Journalists — Fiction
Subject: Bereavement — Psychological aspects — Fiction
Subject: Computer industry — Fiction
Subject: Venture capital — Fiction
Subject: California — Fiction
LC classification: PS3618.I36H66 2007
