The urge to get even runs like a thread through popular culture: Creators who successfully harness that primal drive in their fiction have often built successful careers around it, such as Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino. However, the devil lies in revenge’s details, as author Epperson suggests in this technothriller, which is built around a simple yet hair-raising premise. On the popular and highly illegal KillStarter website, people can crowdfund and contract killings-for-hire at the click of a button: Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, with a high-tech twist. Users nominate potential targets, such as a drunken, bullying British lawyer or a racist, abusive American marketing consultant, and the murders are carried out, quickly and clinically, in return for bitcoin. For KillStarter’s creator—who, fittingly, remains anonymous for most of the book—the rewards lie in serving what they see as “the unseen hand shaping chaos, the mind orchestrating the unthinkable.” However, the game threatens to come undone after a viral frenzy breaks out around the nomination of a predatory Hollywood dealmaker, D’Wayne Robinson, who wastes no time barricading himself at his cliffside California home. The high-profile situation threatens to tear KillStarter’s tightly cordoned world apart. Monterey County Sheriff’s Deputy Lee Mann and FBI agent Miranda Walker have been investigating a string of murders related to the website and satisfying a public that loves KillStarter’s creator isn’t on their agenda. As Mann declares: “This isn’t about liking him; It’s about upholding the system.”
Epperson does an artful job of navigating moral gray areas as the chase ratchets up and Robinson’s potential assassins, who continue zeroing in on their target, are revealed. If the book has a weakness, it’s the relative lack of character development that Mann, Walker, and their colleagues in law enforcement receive. Instead, Epperson sketches them out in broad strokes, as regular Joes and Janes trying to do the right thing. Aside from Mann’s grief over the loss of his wife to cancer and his fiery, if somewhat predictable, “situationship” with Miranda, readers get few glimpses into these characters’ emotional worlds. Similarly, Mann’s computer-expert sidekick, Moss Pendleton, comes across mainly as a relentlessly chipper techie who’s a fan of cinnamon pastries. It’s a disparity that stands in sharp contrast to the villains, whose feral desires for control “over life and death in a world gone rotten” are amply and chillingly detailed. That said, many cyberthriller devotees may see this imbalance as more of a feature than a bug, especially in light of the ambiguity that Epperson weaves around the KillStarter architect’s destiny. This volume could provide a solid foundation for a franchise to explore the moral issues that the author raises so effectively. As it is, it offers readers a rollercoaster ride that brings to mind the chaos of an ever-changing political climate.
