Simple Simon: A Thriller - Hardcover

Pearson, Ryne Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688142966 ISBN 13: 9780688142964

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1996

Synopsis

When Simon Lynch, a sixteen-year-old autistic savant, breaks a government code, the he is hunted by a ruthless Japanese terrorist and rogue members of the National Security Agency, with only FBI Special Agent Art Jefferson to save him.

About this title

About the Author

Ryne Douglas Pearson is an accomplished novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of several novels, including Cloudburst, October's Ghost, Capitol Punishment, Simple Simon, Top Ten, The Donzerly Light, and All For One. He is also the author of the short story collection, Dark and Darker. His novel Simple Simon was made into the film Mercury Rising. As a screenwriter he has worked on numerous movies. The film Knowing, based on his original script, was released in 2009 and opened #1 at the box office. Receiving Four Stars from Roger Ebert, who branded it 'among the best science-fiction films I've seen', it went on to earn more than $180 million worldwide. He has also done uncredited work on films such as the remakes of The Day The Earth Stood Still and The Eye.

Despite the often 'dark' nature of his novels and films, Pearson has been noted to have a 'sweet, disarming quality' by Entertainment Weekly-an accusation he has been unable to shake. When not writing he is usually thinking about writing, or touting the wonders of bacon in online conversations. He is addicted to diet soda and the sound of his children laughing. A west coast native, he lives in California with his wife, children, a Doberman Shepherd and a Beagle Vizsla.

Reviews

A crowded, violent thriller involving an autistic boy who effortlessly cracks a supposedly unbreakable government communications code--and then becomes the target of murderous villainy from shady Washington spies and a sadistic Japanese hit- woman. In this fourth outing, African-American FBI agent Art Jefferson, who previously saved America from a bomb-throwing white supremacist (Capitol Punishment, 1995), has recovered from a heart attack and is now happily married to child-psychologist Anne. Among Anne's patients is Simon Lynch, a cute, childlike, Dustin Hoffmanstyle autistic teenager with astounding mathematical abilities. Given a magazine of puzzles to solve, Simon decodes a series of numbers that instructs him to call an 800 number to receive a prize. The number rings into a top-secret National Security Agency spy den that has just spent $10 billion developing this code for use in all sensitive government communications. (The code had been dropped into the magazine to test its supposed invulnerability.) A tracer on the call alerts a series of fiendish bureaucrats, one of whom dispatches an assassin to Simon's address. Meanwhile, Keiko Kimura, a Japanese terrorist who tortures and cannibalizes her victims, comes to America to steal the government code. Agent Jefferson becomes a target for warring government bureaucracies, as well as a possible meal for Kimura, when he protects the now-orphaned Simon from yet another enemy, a diabolical computer-hacker known only as Rothchild. In a story crammed with too many characters, most of them villains speaking in clipped, enigmatic bureaucratese, Pearson's plot takes a while to work up to speed. Though hastily rendered, Agent Jefferson and Simon nonetheless become anchors in the resulting storm of bloodshed as people are killed off as fast as they're introduced. The Chicago landscape, meantime, is dimly glimpsed, and the climactic, glass-shattering shoot-out on top of the Sears Tower seems lifted from the Die Hard movies. (Film rights to Universal) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sixteen-year-old Simon is autistic but very good at puzzles. When he breaks the main computer code for the National Security Agency (NSA), he is perceived as a threat. After the NSA's first attempt kills his parents, Simon is befriended by a Chicago FBI agent, Art Jefferson. The NSA then tries to eliminate Jefferson, first manipulating FBI charges against him, then arranging his wife's arrest. Running from the NSA and the FBI, Jefferson and Simon are then beset by a Japanese assassin with a taste for sadistic methods. The action culminates in a shoot-out on top of Chicago's Sears Tower and a fiery crash over Lake Michigan. Action-packed and fast-paced, with pungent prose, Pearson's (Capitol Punishment, LJ 7/95) latest novel is a cyberthriller that keeps the reader flipping pages frantically. Recommended for public libraries.?M.J. Simmons, Duluth P. L., Minn.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This cleverly crafted suspense thriller features a standard 1990s theme: the government agency run amok. Energizing this slightly hackneyed premise with a unique slant, Pearson casts as his hero an autistic teenager who is brilliant at solving number puzzles. When 16-year-old Simon Lynch inadvertently cracks the secret code of the National Security Agency, faceless bad guys within the agency send a terrorist to eliminate him. Enter Art Jefferson, FBI agent and husband of Simon's psychologist. Determined as the bad guys are to get Simon, Art is more determined to protect the young innocent. In spite of a few unlikely leaps of logic and improbable plot twists, Pearson offers up plenty of mile-a-minute action along with his appealing, if unlikely, protagonist. Excellent entertainment from first page to last. Emily Melton

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688142966
• ISBN 13: 9780688142964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256