"Hooked" by Matt Richtel

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Hooked
Matt Richtel
304 pp. Twelve. $13.99

Reviewed by Paul Stotts

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“Maybe every life and death, is its own unsolved mystery. Certainly, I was realizing, that was the case with Annie.” – Nathaniel Idle “Hooked”

After reading Matt Richtel’s novel “Hooked”, I will never look at my computer the same way again. It might even have me casting a wary eye at my beloved wife. A novel that promotes itself boldly on its cover as a “thriller about love and other addictions”, “Hooked” is disturbing for what it says about those addictions, namely how the addictions arise. And how addictions arise is a large part of the mystery in the story. And it’s the mystery that makes “Hooked” as compelling as it is, as Richtel submerges the reader into the story with a great setup. With a start this good, you’ll likely be “hooked” within the first few pages, and suffering from a new addiction: finishing this book.

Nathaniel Idle is a freelance medical journalist idly relaxing in a café when a woman walks by his table and slides a note to him. Thinking he is being picked up, Nat follows the woman outside and watches her get into a car. Only then does he open the note and read it: “Get out of the café—NOW!” Immediately, the café explodes.

In the aftermath, Nat, shaken but escaping any real injury, thinks about the love of his life, his deceased girlfriend Annie Kindle. Surprisingly, Nat realizes that it’s Annie’s handwriting on the note. Wondering if Annie is still alive, Nat undertakes a quest to uncover the mystery of the café’s explosion. Enlisting the help of a sympathetic police officer, Danny Weller, Nat investigates the victims as well as the survivors of the explosion. One survivor of interest is Erin Coultran, a waitress at the café, whose mysterious past and relationships with some of the victims may hold answers to the mystery.

When Erin shows Nat the laptop of a good friend who recently killed himself, Nat believes he may have found potentially important information on the dead man’s computer, if he could only access it. It seems that the files on the laptop are protected by a high level of encryption. If he could only access these files, Nat believes he might be able to solve the mystery surrounding Annie’s death. But when his technologically savvy buddy Mike helps him access the laptop, he finds that certain things may be better off left alone.

The first thing that grabbed my attention in “Hooked” is Richtel’s seemingly effortless writing. The scenes flow seamlessly without any narrative hiccups to throw the reader out of the story. The short chapters help accentuate this fact as well as driving the story steadily along. Richtel keeps the exposition to a minimum and the plot tight, always making certain the reader is keeping their eye on the mystery surrounding Annie. The back-story is filled in through Nat’s infrequent recollections about his life with Annie, most of these reflections providing even more questions rather than answers. Things in Nat’s past take on a different interpretation, as if examined in a new light, depending on his current circumstances. It’s like suddenly seeing the flaws in someone that one was originally blinded to. Along this line, people are constantly telling Nat throughout the novel that he was blinded to Annie’s flaws, a fact Nat attributes to being in love. Since “Hooked” is told from Nat’s perspective, we even see his blindness towards Annie’s flaws in the narrative during his recollections, making Nat an unreliable narrator in terms of Annie. Richtel plays upon this by supplying a clever twist about Nat’s blind love of Annie, a twist that most readers may find disturbing in what it says about love.

The biggest criticism of “Hooked” for me is the ending. This is not to say the ending is not good, I just imagined a more spectacular payoff. It’s natural that when you read a mystery, your mind tries to figure out potential endings to the story, and in this case, my solutions were more extravagant than the truth. Richtel’s answer to Annie’s mystery is not as far-fetched as I would have expected from the setup. Because the ending seems so possible and real (along with being quite creepy), it’s likely what makes the conclusion so disturbing. If it had been more spectacularly imagined but utterly unbelievable, “Hooked” wouldn’t have invited the level of reflection it does on its completion. Instead, it would have been easily dismissed as pure entertainment. The questions that the novel raises in the end are what elevates it above other mystery novels. Therefore, this is less a criticism than a personal observation which doesn’t diminish Richtel’s overall solid novel; it just changes the light it should be reviewed in.

Last Word:
Matt Richtel’s “Hooked” grabs you early with a tremendous start to an intriguing and innovative mystery and holds your attention all the way through to the end. Richtel’s tight language keeps the story flowing smoothly, making “Hooked” an effortless read. However be forewarned, this is one addictive book that you likely won’t be able to put down after you’ve started it. And once you finish it, then you may never look at your computer the same way again.

Final Grade: 80 out of 100