Spark - Hardcover

Twelve Hawks, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385538677 ISBN 13: 9780385538671

Publisher: Doubleday, 2014

Synopsis

THE MOST DANGEROUS ASSASSIN IS THE ONE WHO BELIEVES HE IS ALREADY DEAD.

A razor-sharp, high-tech, wildly imaginative new novel from internationally bestselling author John Twelve Hawks,Spark features a narrator unlike any in recent fiction—a man whose view of life and death is different from anything you’ve everimagined.

Jacob Underwood is a contract employee of the Special Services Section, a small shadow department buried within the multinational corporation DBG, headquartered in New York City. Jacob is not a businessman . . . he is a hired assassin . . . and his job is to neutralize problems deemed unacceptable by the corporation. But Jacob is not like other employees, nor is he like other people. After a catastrophic motorcycle accident leaves him with Cotard’s syndrome—an actual condition that causes those afflicted to believe they are dead—Jacob perceives himself as nothing but a “Shell,” with no emotions and no tether to the concept of right and wrong.
Emily Buchanan is a bright young second-year associate for DBG, and she has disappeared without a trace. Suspecting that Emily has stolen either vast sums of money or valuable information from the company, Ms. Holquist, Jacob’s handler at DBG, assigns him the task of tracking down the young woman and neutralizing her. Jacob’s condition allows him to carry out assignments with ruthless, logical precision, devoid of guilt, fear, or dishonor. But as his new assignment draws him inside a labyrinthine network of dark dealings, Jacob finds himself up against something he is completely incapable of understanding.
Shifting with riveting precision from New York to London, Paris to New Delhi, Spark is a thriller that delves into the surveillance state we prognosticate today . . . and will live in tomorrow. In the hands of master storyteller John Twelve Hawks, a unique character’s startling transformation comes to life, makingSpark a thriller that resonates and satisfies on many levels.

About this title

Review:

"A fantastic blend of action and deeper questions about what it means to be human."
--The Washington Post

"Like Philip K Dick's best novels, [Spark] is insidious and troubling, its most profound points made with disarming casualness."
--The Guardian (London)

"Darkly futuristic . . . with a protagonist unlike any other."
--Austin Chronicle

"An adrenaline-charged thriller--endlessly inventive--that winds through a landscape of cutting-edge technology with great assurance and skill."
--Lincoln Child, New York Times bestselling author of The Third Gate

"Twelve Hawks, like a character in his story, is untethered by technology and unreachable by the tentacles of the Vast Machine. He is a free spirit, a lone voice of reason in a data-fogged world."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Spark is a marvel. An utterly gripping, unbelievably imaginative tale with all the heart, drive, and humanity that its hero, Jacob Underwood, a contract assassin, lacks. . . . At once a heart pounding thriller, a bitter indictment of our growing surveillance state, and a life affirming story of the indomitability of the human heart."
--Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Deception

"Breathless action. . . . Twelve Hawks sets up the battles in Spark as more than simple combat. His appeal lies in his pairing of one system of belief against another and letting them duke it out."
--The New York Times

"From start to finish Spark defies expectation, joining a 'dead' man's cold regard with suspense at fever pitch."
--Locus

"As good as the Fourth Realm books were, this one may be even more appealing: less fantastic, more grounded in a contemporary real world, with a narrator who is deeply scarred and endlessly fascinating." --Booklist (starred review)

Book Description:

The extraordinary and prescient new thriller from the bestselling author of The Traveller

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0385538677
• ISBN 13: 9780385538671
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 301