You have a lot to do.
How long has it been since the last time you were together? It’s okay, the years will pass when you’re with your oldest and longest-lived friends. There was a time when you were inseparable and it felt good to reconnect, but just like in Sean Doolittle’s new novel Device Free Weekend, how little do you know them ?
Has it really been 20 years since the Stillwater Seven got together?
Stephen Rollins added it on his flight from Chicago to Denver. Yep, it’s been two decades since his college chums were all in the same room. Last time was Will and Perry’s wedding day, yes, it’s been a while.
He kept up with everyone, sometimes, more or less. Will and Perry tell him about Emma’s life in Minnesota. He half-follows Beau and Lainey (known as Blainey) on YouTube. As for Ryan, well, Stephen watched from afar. His old roommate is too busy running a multi-million dollar multinational social media company to be in regular contact.
So when the exquisite invitation arrived, printed with gleaming silver and numbers, Stephen hesitated. Does he want to close the windows and skip weekends spent on Ryan Cloverhill’s private Pacific Northwest island? Then again, how could he miss all the costs of three days of boating, whale watching and reminiscing?
He was genuinely excited to meet Emma on the same flight from Denver to Seattle. At one point, Stephen fell in love with her, and Ryan fell in love with her, which she regretted – but it felt right to reconnect with her. That’s it.
Not good though; Ryan confiscated everyone’s phones, tablets and watches as soon as they arrived, He’s acting weird. Also not good: Ryan looks bad, he singles out Stephen that he has cancer, and the weekend is his last cheer.
He begged Stephen not to tell others.
Then he drugged everyone at dinner the first night and Ryan just disappeared…
Make any connection you want between social media, the online world, ubiquitous devices, technologists, and more — the truth is, with just one finger on the digital pulse and one finger on the trigger, “device-free Weekend” is a pretty good thriller.
While you may have a sense of what’s going on in the first few pages – and you’d be right – author Sean Doolittle keeps the reader guessing about the details of this novel – the ones the reader is happy to notice Be credible without doing a full IT research on anyone. Reading this won’t take you into CPU territory; no, it’s up-to-date, but with the usual, comfortingly familiar elements of a thriller—vengeance, bullets, spy devices, high-speed chases—that hover between good and bad. On a tightrope between a greedy and a moral killer.
Like many thrillers, “Device Free Weekend” can lag at times, but take a breath before diving back into a story that turns you in every direction. This is a book worth reading if you want to.