Stu Ramey, a "brilliant software guy with the social skills of an onion," takes a lead role in bestseller Jance's imaginative 12th Reynolds thriller (after 2016's Claw Back). Ramey is second-in-command at High Noon Enterprises, a cybersecurity firm owned by Ali and her husband, B. Simpson, in Cottonwood, Ariz. When Roger McGeary, a boyhood friend of Ramey's employed by another cyber- security company in California, jumps to his death off a cruise ship into the English Channel, McGeary's aunt turns to Ramey for answers. It turns out that the ship's owner, genius Owen Hansen, whose father committed suicide, is targeting other children of suicides such as McGeary. While Ali handles interviews, Ramey tracks the online footprints of Hansen, who calls himself Odin, and Frigg, Hansen's "all-knowing artificial intelligence sidekick and companion," to whom Jance imputes nearly human characteristics. Frigg becomes a major player as Hansen and the folks at High Noon race to a climactic showdown. Agent: Alice Volpe, Northwest Literary Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A shipboard tragedy is prologue to a deadly cyberduel.Roger McGeary enjoys being a hero. Having transformed himself from a perpetual outsider, computer geek, and inmate of a mental hospital to the computer genius who prevented a massive data breach, he's now basking in four-star service during the luxury cruise that's been his reward. It doesn't matter that he can barely tie a bow tie when he has a butler to do it for him. The butler is the first to realize that sometime after a dress ball, Roger jumped or fell off the ship. Investigators call it death by misadventure, but his auntthe one relative he has leftisn't convinced. Seeking help in proving Roger was murdered, she approaches High Noon Enterprises, an Arizona-based cybersecurity business, because Roger's one friend from high school, Stuart Rameyanother lonely misfit who found his true calling in computer wizardryis the behind-the-scenes star of High Noon. Stu's sympathetic employers, B. Simpson and Ali Reynolds, agree to help him and his friend's aunt by taking the case. They don't know that Owen Hansen, a recluse who's been obsessed with suicide ever since his father killed himself, is using a psychotherapist's hacked patient data to target others whose parents took their own lives. Calling himself Odin and relying on his consort, an intricate networked AI system he's dubbed Frigg, Owen's already started tormenting his next victim. But he reckons without the combined expertise of High Noon, especially the determined Stu, in a stop-and-start tale of high tech, complex psychological case histories, and the occasional diversion into Ali's hiring issues with her domestic help. Jance (Random Acts, 2016, etc.) can't seem to keep out of her own way or avoid sidelining the supposed heroine in this 15th franchise installment. But the character who does take the lead deserves to keep it, and the ending helps make up for the cumbersome plot. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.