Reich's Latest is a Formulaic Hot Mess

Invasion of Privacy - Christopher Reich

Maybe it has something to do with the growing income gap between the one-percenters and the rest of the world, but when is the last time you read a fiction novel about a billionaire who wasn’t… well, evil? It’s been a while for me, and that’s a fact. On the other hand, I’ve read a lot of evil-billionaire plots over the years and almost (please not, I said “almost”!) feel sorry for the poor rich folks so maligned by authors. The latest of their number is a tech guru named Ian Prince, who’s been manhandled – literarily, not literally – by Christopher Reich in his latest, Invasion of Privacy.

Prince, by virtue of his vast fortune, is the villain – the heroine is Mary Grant, freshly widowed mother of two whose late husband was FBI agent Joe Grant. Joe’s dying voice mail message to Mary suggests that something went terribly wrong, but no one at the FBI office will listen to her – and then the message disappears. Determined to find out why the bureau seems to be covering up the circumstances of Joe’s death, the young widow enlists the aid of Tank Potter, an alcoholic journalist freshly fired from his job at a local newspaper.

Grant and Potter skitter across the landscape in search of clues about the mysterious “semaphore” – whose name Mary divined from a bunch of triangular doodles Joe left on a scrap of paper (you gotta be kidding). Prince and his henchmen, led by the stereotypical South African ex-paratrooper, block their every move. What’s worse, Prince – who, through a series of corporate takeovers, has somehow managed to take control of virtually every form of modern communications – has put his massive supercomputers to work to destroy Mary’s and Tank’s digital lives.

Never fear, however: Mary Grant, fake FBI agent, is on the job.

The tenth novel from the pen of Christopher Reich, Invasion of Privacy takes place – for the most part – in my old stompin’ grounds around Austin, Texas. Reich, who lives in California, clearly knows little about the town; getting distances and directions wrong and citing only internet-famous and nonexistent localities. While he gets the name of the local paper – The Austin American-Statesman – right, he misses out on the local joke about the air route that connects Austin with San Jose, California: had he been local, he’d have known it’s been nicknamed “the Nerd Bird.”

But never mind that quibble, because even without that failing the novel is a mess. Start with the hackneyed “drunk reporter,” a “former football hero” who works for his hometown paper. Continue with the hackneyed South African mercenary, the overly routine “still hot thirty-something mother of two,” and – of course – the evil billionaire. But most of all, consider the utter stupidity of a plot that calls for a woman, widowed for less than two days, to slip into her skinny jeans, grab her dead hubby’s badge and weapon, and get down to investigating. And this whole government corruption plot? Give us a break!

This is my third Reich novel  (after The Devil’s Banker and The Patriot’s Club) – it’s got a four-star average at the river, which is never a good sign. That’s fitting, because this thriller is formulaic junk, filled with hackneyed plots – the vengeful widow, the alky newsman redeems himself and the evil billionaire controlling the world are just some of them. Reich falls flat in providing motivation for his villain, and there is zero logic behind Prince’s ability to manipulate every computer and every piece of software hos company touches. Get real – a CEO who’s so hands-on he can still run any piece of software in a massive communications conglomerate, and also manages to insert a backdoor into all the software? I repeat: get real!

It’s fast-paced and just sexy enough for the undiscerning, but thoughtful readers will want to steer clear of Invasion of Privacy. It's just not all that good.