Code 6: A Novel

by James Grippando

Overview

"A Pandora's box of demons. . . . High-stakes espionage, family drama, double crosses, noble gestures . . . it's all here." -- Kirkus Reviews

"An ambitious thriller that. . . delivers a deeply satisfying conclusion. . . . Code 6 features some of Grippando's most compelling characters and one of his most intriguing stories." -- Booklist

Harper Lee Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author James Grippando returns with a bold new thriller that asks at what price do we open our lives to Big Data.

Aspiring playwright, Kate Gamble, is struggling to launch a script she's been secretly researching her entire life, mostly at the family dinner table. Her father is Christian Gamble, CEO of Buck Technologies, a private data integration company whose clients include the CIA and virtually every counter-terrorism organization in the Western World. Kate's father adores her, and a play about the dark side of Big Data would be the ultimate betrayal in his eyes. But Kate is compelled to tell this story--not only as an artist exploring the personal information catastrophe that affects us all, but as a daughter trying to understand her mother's apparent loss of purpose, made even more disturbing by the suicide note she left behind: I did it for Kate.

Then Patrick Battle comes back into her life, changing everything she has ever thought about her play, her father, and her mother's tragic death. Patrick is a childhood friend, but he is now Buck's golden boy with security clearance to the company's most sensitive projects. When Buck comes under investigation by the Justice Department and Patrick suddenly goes missing, Kate doesn't know who to trust. A phone call confirms her worst nightmare: Patrick has been kidnapped, and the ransom demand is "Code 6"--the most secret and potentially dangerous technology her father's company has ever developed.

Kate's fight to bring Patrick home safely reveals a conspiracy and cover up that may implicate one of the most powerful executives in the tech industry, while the development of Kate's play unleashes family secrets and the demons behind her mother's cryptic final note. The two paths converge in explosive fashion, leading to a shocking and terrifying discovery that puts Kate and Patrick in the crosshairs of forces who will stop at nothing to control Code 6.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063223806
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/02/2024
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	977,281
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author with more than thirty books to his credit, including those in his acclaimed series featuring Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck, and is the winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. He is also a trial lawyer and teaches law and literature at the University of Miami School of Law. He lives and writes in South Florida.

Hometown:

Coral Gables, Florida

Date of Birth:

January 27, 1958

Place of Birth:

Waukegan, Illinois

Education:

B.A. with High Honors, University of Florida, 1980; J.D. with Honors, University of Florida, 1982

Website:

http://www.jamesgrippando.com

Editorial Reviews

10/24/2022

At the start of this uneven standalone from bestseller Grippando (the Jack Swyteck series), Kate Gamble, an American University law student and would-be playwright, arrives at her parents’ penthouse apartment in Tysons Corner, Va., to find that her mother, Elizabeth, apparently just jumped to her death from its balcony. A note Elizabeth left behind apologizes to her husband and adds that she “did it for Kate.” Seeking to move on with her life, Kate accepts an internship at her father’s company, Buck Technologies International, a private data-integration firm serving “virtually every counterterrorism organization in the Western World”; she also works on a play about how IBM enabled the Nazis to use data from punch cards to track down Jews. Kate stumbles upon a secret at Buck Technologies that threatens the life of an employee she used to babysit for and places her in an awkward position when the Justice Department conducts a security audit of the company, headed by an old boyfriend. Thoughtful and plausible speculations about how big tech could become even more intrusive and a sympathetic, capable heroine make up only in part for plot contrivances and formulaic action sequences. Grippando’s execution falls short of his ambitions. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (Jan.}

Publishers Weekly

"Expect combustion of all sorts from the New York Times bestselling Grippando." — Library Journal

“Chilling . . . Grippando leads Twenty through a complex plot that maintains its sense of realism until the surprising finale.” — South Florida Sun Sentinel on Twenty

"There’s a reason that James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. . . . Twenty certainly works well as a stand-alone title, but it also will inspire readers to delve into Grippando’s backlist, so be prepared." — Book Reporter on Twenty

"What begins as a thriller and then moves into a legal novel, devolves into a full-blown espionage story that calls to mind the work of Brad Thor, among others . . . When the significance of the number twenty is finally revealed it will send chills down your spine and you will soon realize that this is unlike any other Jack Swyteck novel to date." — CriminalElement.com on Twenty

“Twenty is an excellent legal thriller by an experienced hand at storytelling . . . It’s still only January, but it looks as though James Grippando may have offered us one of the best thrillers of 2021.” — New York Journal of Books on Twenty

“James Grippando's taut and briskly paced story grips the reader from the opening chapter and then keeps them close as Jack Swyteck and his associates race to uncover the forces bent on keeping the truth of the tragedy hidden. Twenty is a highly addictive novel and it is impossible to put down." — Mystery Scene on Twenty

“A Pandora’s box of demons. . . . High-stakes espionage, family drama, double crosses, noble gestures . . . it’s all here.”  — Kirkus Reviews

“Grippando masterfully weaves the various plot threads together, revealing unexpected connections . . . this is an ambitious thriller that asks the reader to follow a complex story and delivers a deeply satisfying conclusion. Grippando’s biggest strength has always been his ability to create characters who feel as real as people we might meet on the street. . . . CODE 6 features some of Grippando's most compelling characters and one of his most intriguing stories.”  — Booklist

James Grippando . . . proves why he is one of the best thriller writers out there with the release of his latest stand-alone novel, CODE 6. . . . What really drives this book are the characters—fully fleshed-out, real and complex—and you cannot help but root for Kate every step of the way right up until the stunning conclusion. — Bookreporter.com

From the Publisher

"There’s a reason that James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. . . . Twenty certainly works well as a stand-alone title, but it also will inspire readers to delve into Grippando’s backlist, so be prepared."

Book Reporter on Twenty

"What begins as a thriller and then moves into a legal novel, devolves into a full-blown espionage story that calls to mind the work of Brad Thor, among others . . . When the significance of the number twenty is finally revealed it will send chills down your spine and you will soon realize that this is unlike any other Jack Swyteck novel to date."

CriminalElement.com on Twenty

Chilling . . . Grippando leads Twenty through a complex plot that maintains its sense of realism until the surprising finale.

South Florida Sun Sentinel on Twenty

James Grippando's taut and briskly paced story grips the reader from the opening chapter and then keeps them close as Jack Swyteck and his associates race to uncover the forces bent on keeping the truth of the tragedy hidden. Twenty is a highly addictive novel and it is impossible to put down."

Mystery Scene on Twenty

Twenty is an excellent legal thriller by an experienced hand at storytelling . . . It’s still only January, but it looks as though James Grippando may have offered us one of the best thrillers of 2021.

New York Journal of Books

"What begins as a thriller and then moves into a legal novel, devolves into a full-blown espionage story that calls to mind the work of Brad Thor, among others . . . When the significance of the number twenty is finally revealed it will send chills down your spine and you will soon realize that this is unlike any other Jack Swyteck novel to date."

CriminalElement.com

James Grippando's taut and briskly paced story grips the reader from the opening chapter and then keeps them close as Jack Swyteck and his associates race to uncover the forces bent on keeping the truth of the tragedy hidden. Twenty is a highly addictive novel and it is impossible to put down."

Mystery Scene

"There’s a reason that James Grippando is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. . . . Twenty certainly works well as a stand-alone title, but it also will inspire readers to delve into Grippando’s backlist, so be prepared."

Book Reporter

Chilling . . . Grippando leads Twenty through a complex plot that maintains its sense of realism until the surprising finale.

South Florida Sun Sentinel

2022-10-12
An aspiring playwright’s plan to base her first production on the secrets kept by her father’s powerful IT firm unleashes a Pandora’s box of demons.

Buck Technologies International counts among its clients the Pentagon and the CIA. Kate Gamble, the daughter of CEO Christian Gamble, knows a little and suspects more about the legacy of its surveillance technology. Still grieving the suicide two years ago of her alcoholic mother, Elizabeth, she takes time from her studies in law school to draft a play about the history of Hollerith machines, primitive computers first deployed in the 1890 U.S. census and used by the Third Reich to track information about its Jewish residents and keep the concentration camps running in good order. While she’s hunkering down to the first of many rewrites demanded by Broadway director Irving Bass, who’s interested in the material despite its historical sprawl, more disturbing developments await her extended family. Kate’s ex Noah Dunn, a senior cybercrimes prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., expresses renewed interest in Christian Gamble’s relationship with Sandra Levy, a “trusted advisor” who’s doing time for corporate espionage. And the Chinese government, which paid Levy and her highly placed accomplice for Buck Technologies secrets they didn’t deliver, plucks Patrick Battle, an up-and-coming Buck employee Kate used to babysit, from a corporate survival exercise in Colombia and uses him as a hostage to extort the particulars of Code 6, an undetectable data scraping tool, from Christian Gamble and Jeremy Peel, the chairman of the board who’s trying to push him out and take his place. None of these 12-cylinder adventures do justice to the paranoid premise.

High-stakes espionage, family drama, double crosses, noble gestures: For better or worse, it’s all here.

Kirkus Reviews