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KILLFILE
John Smith possesses a special gift that seems more like a curse: he can access other people’s thoughts.
He hears the songs stuck in their heads, knows their most private traumas and fears, and relives their most painful memories.
The CIA honed his skills until he was one of their most powerful operatives, but John fled the agency and now works as a private consultant, trying to keep the dark potentials of his gift in check — and himself out of trouble.
Unfortunately, John is plunged into dangerous waters when his latest client, billionaire software genius Everett Sloan, hires him to investigate a former employee — a tech whiz kid named Eli Preston — and search his thoughts for some very valuable intellectual property Sloan is convinced he’s stolen.
But before John can probe Preston’s mind, his identity is compromised and he’s on the run for his life, along with Sloan’s young associate Kelsey Foster.
Hunted by shadowy enemies with extensive resources and unknown motives, John and Kelsey must go off the grid. John knows that using his powers to their fullest potential is their only hope for survival — even if it means putting his own sanity at risk.
PRAISE FOR KILLFILE
“Fast, fun, and frenetic. A whip-smart edge-of-your-seat thriller. I enjoyed the hell out of it.”
— Ernest Cline, author of READY PLAYER ONE and ARMADA
“Christopher Farnsworth has written a blistering, provocative, and propulsive novel — reading KILLFILE is the equivalent of being strapped to the nosecone of a ballistic missile hurtling through the sky at 5,000 MPH. Which is to say, it’s one hell of a ride.”
— Beau Smith, creator/writer of WYNONNA EARP
“From the very first page of KILLFILE, I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller. Christopher Farnsworth delivers his best thriller yet, and I can’t wait to read whatever he comes up with next.”
— Boyd Morrison, author of THE ARK and THE EMPEROR’S REVENGE (with Clive Cussler)
“Part James Bond, part Jason Bourne, part Professor X, only smarter, wittier, and can run faster. Adrenaline action at its mind-reading best. Christopher Farnsworth’s KILLFILE unleashes the greatest weapon ever: the human mind.”
— Nick Cutter, author of THE TROOP and THE DEEP
“Like his protagonist, Chris Farnsworth is a mind reader: he knows how to keep me hooked until I reach the last page. KILLFILE is his best yet.”
— Ian Tregillis, author of BITTER SEEDS and THE RISING
“Telepathy and dirty deeds have been a staple since at least Bester’s The Demolished Man, but Christopher Farnsworth has demonstrated in KILLFILE that there’s still fresh territory to be claimed there. Mixing a deliciously readable hybrid of “man on the run” adventure with technothriller elements and a protagonist with a powerful telepathic talent that doesn’t hesitate to kick him in the balls on occasion, Killfile is, in the final analysis, bloody good fun.”
— Jonathan Howard, author of JOHANNES CABAL THE NECROMANCER
Available from:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Bookstore.org | IndieBound | Kobo | Target | Walmart
Available in the UK from Bonnier Zaffre as HUNT YOU DOWN
FLASHMOB
As a fixer for America’s one percent, John Smith cleans up the messes of those rich enough to afford him.
But he’s no ordinary gun for hire. Smith is a man of rare gifts, including the ability to read minds. Arriving at the wedding of Kira Sadeghi, a reality television celebrity he recently saved from kidnappers, Smith witnesses a group of gunmen open fire, hitting the bride and others. Though he’s unarmed, Smith cripples one of the killers and is able to pry one word from his mind: "Downvote."
Eager to learn more, Smith hacks into the brain of an FBI agent investigating the attack to discover the Bureau has been investigating a nefarious new threat called "Downvote," an encrypted site on the "dark net" that lists the names of celebrities and offers a hefty bounty for anyone who can kill them—unleashing an anonymous and deadly flashmob with a keystroke.
Finding a mastermind on the internet is like trying to catch air—unless you’re John Smith. Motivated by money and revenge, he traces a series of electronic signatures to a reclusive billionaire living at sea, accompanied by a scary-smart female bodyguard who becomes Smith’s partner in his quest. The hunt for their prey will lead from Hong Kong to Reykjavik to a luxury gambling resort deep in the Laotian jungle. Yet always this criminal mastermind remains one step ahead.
The only way Downvote’s creator can stop Smith is to kill him. because while this diabolical genius can run, there’s no hiding from a man who can read minds.
Praise for FLASHMOB
“The main elements of Farnsworth’s brilliant second thriller featuring the man known as John Smith would individually be enough to sustain interest; the combination of a telepathic lead and a terrifyingly plausible effort to use the Internet for social manipulation produces intelligent and knuckle-biting suspense . . . Farnsworth credibly ups the ante for his hero and makes accepting his paranormal abilities easy. Many will want to read this novel in one sitting.”
“[In] Christopher Farnsworth’s clever new international thriller . . . it’s Smith’s amazing strength that profoundly weakens him at times. [This] offers a very original twist in a creepy tale about stalking, social media madness, celebrity, the Dark Net, privacy in the digital age, Internet cruelty, cyber crime, and mob psychosis . . . . deft story-telling and the explosive finale which made me think of master thriller writer Joseph Finder.
Flashmob is truly disturbing. It’s one thing to worry about computer programs that can perform highly intrusive surveillance on you, it’s another to think of people who can insidiously do the exact same thing mentally while drinking a cappuccino just a few tables away from you at Starbucks.”
“Farnsworth . . . is a genuinely gifted storyteller, able to take a fantastic premise and build onto it a story that feels not just plausible but completely natural . . . A fine genre-bender.”
“Farnsworth has a definite knack for taking something relatively esoteric, combining it with something just a little the other side of ordinary, and winding up with something totally possible and incredibly readable.”
“Flashmob is even more suspenseful than its predecessor, Killfile. Farnsworth writes in first-person in the present tense, which greatly adds to the suspense. This technique allows the reader to immerse themselves into the plot and closely follow the action. Character development is quite strong in the book as well.
However, what I liked most about Flashmob is its premise. The book shows the tremendous power rapid advances in modern technology such as social networking and the “Internet of Things” have in our lives and how they can be turned against us by evil persons. The book is a dire warning to our society, a stark reminder that we must use modern technology with great responsibility, especially with all the advancements that happen almost daily.”
