Pg. 99: Matt Richtel's "Hooked"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Matt Richtel's Hooked.

About the book, from the author's website:

Nat Idle, a medical student turned journalist, sits in a San Francisco cafe when a woman puts a folded note on his table. Nat picks up the note, walks to the door to follow her, opens the note and reads: Get out of the Cafe, NOW! The cafe explodes. Sitting in the rubble, he discovers the impossible: the handwriting on the note appears to belong to his deceased ex-girlfriend, a powerful venture capitalists who died four years earlier.

Thus begins Hooked and Nat's frantic quest for answers. His search ultimately presents him with a series of surprises and twists and leads him to discover unnerving truths about himself, and the frenetically-paced digital world he inhabits.

Among the early praise for Hooked:

"If Michael Crichton and John Grisham decided to collaborate on a novel set in Silicon Valley they might come up with a thriller as cutting-edge and suspenseful as Hooked. With this highly addictive debut, Matt Richtel could become the bard of the iPod generation."
—Edgar-Award winner Rupert Holmes, author of Swing and Where the Truth Lies

"Hooked is not only an exciting thriller, but also a remarkably moving and human story, and a very funny novel as well. Matt Richtel has written a very smart and engaging page-turner about the chaos of our present moment and the timeless qualities that make us human."
—Edgar Award winner David Liss, author of Conspiracy Paper and The Ethical Assassin

"Hooked is a hot, hip thriller about love and other addictions in the cyber-age. Matt Richtel is a hell of a talent. After I read Hooked, I shot my computer."
—Stephen Coonts, author of The Traitor

"Wow. Hooked is a wild roller-coaster ride through the hidden world where digital and biological cultures meet and clash. The scariest thing about Matt Richtel's astonishing first novel is that it is all possible, it is all probable -- and it is all probably happening to us right now."
—Katherine Neville,best-selling author of The Eight

Matt Richtel is an author, journalist, and cartoonist. Hooked is his first novel.

Visit Richtel's website and his blog, and read an excerpt from Hooked.

The Page 99 Test: Hooked.

--Marshal Zeringue