Paradime: A Novel

by Alan Glynn Narrated by Will Damron

Overview

What would you do if life handed you a double?

Danny Lynch didn't sign up for this, but right now this line cook gig is all he's got. Three weeks ago he was gainfully employed in Afghanistan and doing fine. Now he's back in New York City and lucky to be employed at all, even if that means dicing carrots for ten hours a day in a stuffy Midtown restaurant. The job's one saving grace is a sight line from his prep station in the kitchen to a coveted corner table in the main room. For Danny this is a window into the lives of Barcadero's flashy clientele-which, he soon discovers, includes a man who happens to look exactly like him.

Teddy Trager is a young venture capitalist, the visionary founder of billion-dollar investment firm Paradime Capital. He has everything Danny never knew he wanted-a cashmere suit, a gorgeous girlfriend, a sleek sports car-and the closer Danny looks at Trager, the more fixated he becomes.

A new stand-alone novel from the award-winning author of Limitless, Paradime is a harrowing story of a twenty-first-century identity crisis that thrills from the start.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/06/2016
Edgar-finalist Glynn (Limitless) updates The Prince and the Pauper in this breezy thriller set in the financial world. Danny Lynch, an Iraq and Afghanistan vet with mental-health problems, receives a letter that eventually leads to a job at an upscale Manhattan restaurant, where he spies his look-alike, Teddy Trager, a venture capitalist who runs Paradime Capital. Danny becomes obsessed with his doppelganger and quits his job, much to his girlfriend’s dismay. After Danny succeeds in impersonating Teddy at business meetings and in sexual dalliances with Teddy’s girlfriend, he boldly forges business documents. Then he meets Teddy face to face. When Teddy is killed, Danny is recruited to pose as Teddy to maintain Paradime’s business deals. But of course, Danny is just a puppet. By the time Danny realizes what he has lost and who is manipulating his new life and identity, readers will be several steps ahead of him. Only in the last two chapters does Glynn put an interesting spin on this familiar conceit. Agent: Antony Harwood, Antony Harwood Ltd. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

“As with all great novels, Paradime raises more questions than it answers...A pulsating tale from one of the most inventive practitioners working in contemporary crime fiction, a novel that pounds to the rhythms of the conventional thriller but employs its tropes to divert its protagonist, and the reader, down some very unusual dark alleyways.” —Declan Burke, The Irish Times

“Bristling with paranoia, this wheels-within-wheels conspiracy novel is both insidious and ingenious.” —Laura Wilson, The Guardian (UK)

“[Paradime] is a doppelganger tale of conspiracy and paranoia which starts in fourth gear, quickly revis up into fifth and thereafter roars along like an Exocet in agony...Suffice to say that it's his most inventive novel since [Limitless]—and arguably a more fascinating psychological-thriller-cum-tragedy.” —Crime Always Pays

“Deliciously creepy...The plot keeps moving with plenty of effective surprises, and the final chapters successfully navigate to an even darker tone.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Suspend your disbelief, and go along for a superfast, thoroughly enjoyable roller-coaster ride with Danny.” —Booklist

“The novel's fever-dream narration is intoxicating, its first section in particular a kind of contemporary nightmare picaresque...Carefully constructed [and] full of epiphanies that shed shocking new light on earlier scenes.” —Detectives Beyond Borders

Additional Praise for Alan Glynn

“Hugely relevant [and] undeniably compelling.” —Chris Pavone, author of The Expats and The Accident

“Scarily plausible...There are, as the publishers claim, echoes of John le Carré, 24, and James Ellroy here, but Glynn's talen is all his own.” —The Guardian (London)

“[Glynn] has a knack for depicting a shifting reality, partly by introducing us to characters who are already at their mental and emotional limits...His heroes exist in contemporary free fall, bracing themselves against whatever surface is available...Remarkable.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Timely, topical, and thrilling.” —John Connolly, author of the Charlie Parker series

Kirkus Reviews

2016-05-17
The plot twists can get a little confusing in the latest high-tech sci-fi thriller from Glynn (The Dark Fields, 2001, etc.). But at least readers will never be quite as confused as Danny Lynch, the story's unlucky not-quite hero.From the start, Danny is a mess: he's recently back from Afghanistan where he worked a low-level job in food services for the defense contractor Gideon Logistics. He's traumatized by his memories of witnessing a horrific act of violence for which Gideon officials were to blame; now their lawyers want to shut him up. But instead of making threats, they set him up with another, more desirable kitchen job in a high-end restaurant. The situation quickly turns strange when Danny notices that one of the restaurant's regular patrons looks exactly like him. He investigates online and finds that his double is Teddy Trager, a visionary investor and founder of Paradime Capital. Before long he's fully obsessed with Teddy—stalking him through New York, posing as him at public events, even managing to sleep with his girlfriend. Danny's own girlfriend, Kate, already mad at him for not having the courage to blow the whistle on Gideon, now fears he's losing his marbles. Until Danny and Teddy have their one face-to-face encounter, the story maintains a deliciously creepy atmosphere, with dark humor as Danny manages to sneak into Teddy's life. The plot keeps moving with plenty of effective surprises, and the final chapters successfully navigate to an even darker tone. So the not-quite-resolved ending seems perfectly appropriate, even if you have to read it over to make sense of it.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169605723
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/02/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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