Black Nowhere
Lisa Tanchik, Book 1
by Reece Hirsch
Pub DateSep 01 2019
Thomas & Mercer |Thomas & Mercer
General Fiction \(Adult\)| Mystery & Thrillers



Thomas Mercer and Netgalley provided me with a copy of Black Nowhere for review:




Lisa Tanchik is an expert at taking down cybercriminals. When the FBI discovers a multibillion-dollar black market online, she's charged with bringing the creator to justice. Special Agent Lisa Tanchik is the best at taking down cybercriminals. So when the FBI discovers a multibillion-dollar black market online, she’s tasked with finding the creator and bringing him to justice. Donning.Tanchik goes undercover into the network in one of her many digital disguises.



This site was started by brilliant college student Nate Fallon as an idealistic experiment. His platform, however, has not only made illegal trade more efficient, but also more dangerous. The FBI isn't the only one after him now. Profits soar, and a criminal organization casts its monstrous gaze on Fallon.



Fallon is forced to make a decision that will have devastating consequences due to pressure from both sides of the law. Is Agent Tanchik able to locate Fallon before his dangerous infrastructure falls into the wrong hands?



I give Black Nowhere three out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

This was a great start to a series, I loved Lisa Tanchik as a main character and the plot was so good. It hooked me in from the first page.

Engrossing cybercrime thriller pitting a young female FBI agent against the founder of a dark web commerce site. Both lead characters are well-defined and based on reality, not superheroes or super villains, and their plot moves actually make sense. Looking forward to reading the next book in the series

Wow. I hope this book will be developed into a movie or a limited series. Yes it’s that good. This is coming from someone who reads your standard psychological thrillers. If you’re ready for something different, check out this title.

A police-procedural with dark undertones that is told from dual perspectives. Hirsch did well to develop and maintain characters within the narrative, each lending individual support to the plot. Ironically, each character was also burdened with traits or nuances that made them unappealing. It is here that the reader is offered a unique perspective and able to appreciate the author’s true intent. Highly character driven. Recommended to crime/procedural fans everywhere! 4 stars.

A really enjoyable book with a likable IT protagonist try to prove the value of her work to her FBI colleagues & bosses.

This was my first Reece Hirsch book but it won't be my last! FBI agent, Lisa is a whiz at cybercrime solving so when she is surfing the Dark Web and comes across the site Kyte, she realizes it's a hub of illegal activity as its mastermind has set it up to sell drugs and firearms. Of course it's encrypted and she has no way to discover the IP address so she must use several tricks to appear legitimate and gain information. Next we have Nate, the young college student behind the site who is a Libertarian and believes he is just allowing people the freedom to buy quality products bypassing the criminal elements associated with the street. So there's lots of money to be made, blackmail, threats, and mistaken identity. Although it's fiction, it's loosely based on a true story and I found it compelling. Fortunately, it's the first in a series starring agent Lisa so I await the next installment!

Nate Fallon creates KYTE, a website on the dark web that offers illegal products, like drugs, for sale. Nate considers KYTE “an experiment in a violence-free, coercion-free economy”. All of a sudden it’s making $1 million a day in sales. Nate discovers that the growth is due to an online article “Dark Web’s Online Drug Bazaar” with screen shots of available products and prices.

FBI Special Agent Lisa Tanchik brings the growing presence of KYTE to her supervisor SAC Pam Gilbertson and finds herself on a multi-agency task force to find out who’s behind the website and bring them down.

In short order, Nate (aka CaptainMal) and Lisa (aka Rodrigo) are communicating online. Nate is wrestling with the need to add more distributors and Lisa is trying to get closer to who owns KYTE. Author Reece Hirsch fabricates a compelling cat and mouse read as the two protagonists work through their efforts to succeed in their mission. Distractions: a drug cartel threatens Nate, a top distributor blackmails Nate and close friends drop away as Nate’s business keeps him occupied.

Hirsch’s shifts in perspective between Nate and Lisa provide meaningful background into motives and decisions. Black Nowhere is a fascinating story offering interesting descriptions of the internet, the dark web and illegal websites. Apparently this is the first in a new series featuring Special FBI Agent Lisa Tanchik, with a masters’ degree in computer science, who specializes in cybercrime. Looking forward to the next installment.

There are so many reviews for this already -- I'll just say that this is a slightly flawed but solid thriller likely to please most fans of the genre. 3.5 stars rounded up.

I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

Nate Fallon is an idealist who believes everyone is entitled to buy drugs without government interference. To that end he has set up Kyte, an experimental marketplace on the Dark Web, where illegal drugs are bought and sold. Kyte is well planned and has made drug sales very cost effective. Nate is making a lot of money, but the FBI are on to him and so are the big cartels.

FBI special agent Lisa Tanchik is an expert in cybercrime with a detailed knowledge of the Dark Web. An anonymous message on one of the boards leads her to a link for Kyte and as she scrolls through, the scale of the operation and incredible amount of money changing hands begins to register. Using her online alter ego, Rodrigo, she signs up.

The story is told from the perspectives of Lisa and Nate, as she works to infiltrate Kyte and Nate realises his foray into the dangerous world of drug dealing is getting out of hand in more ways than one. Libertarianism and the prospect of unimaginable wealth can make a person do things they wouldn’t have believed themselves capable of. A lengthy prison sentence becomes the least of Nate’s worries.

Black Nowhere is well written and the technical aspect isn’t too confusing although I know next to nothing about the Dark Web, except that it exists. The pace is steady as we follow Lisa’s attempts to gain Nate’s trust through their online personas, leading to more action in the second half of the book. Nate has an inflated ego, not recognising or accepting what he’s doing is harmful to others, and not only those who buy the drugs. His character seems to be more developed than Lisa.

I didn’t really feel I got to know Lisa, except for the fact she’s passionate about her job. She suffered a devastating personal loss and her ‘black dog’ is clinical depression. She relies on alcohol to cope and keeps a water bottle filled with vodka with her. I’m not sure how she’d get away with that … Perhaps her character will reveal more depth as the series progresses.

Quite a few reviewers have labelled this book as a fictionalised version of the true story of Ross Ulbricht’s Silk Road—the first Dark Web platform for selling illegal drugs. For those of us who weren’t aware of Silk Road (and perhaps some who were) I think the story stands on its own merits. It’s a chilling insight into something that will, in all probability, only expand and become more insidious.

Agent Lisa Tanchik is not your typical FBI agent and is still trying to make her place in the bureau with her unique skills and aptitude with all things related with the Dark Web. After work she stumbles upon a website that happens to be the eBay for drugs, guns and all things questionable, she decides to talk to her boss to see if this is something worth pursuing, she ends up on an interagency task force where she must be a team player but also pursue her leads as she feels she must.

I absolutely adored this book. It was so fast paced and interesting with a new set of criminals in our technologically abled world. I work at a technology company and I just kept of the smart people we employ under our roof and all the things that they can do with their skills, it blows my mind! I loved that the agent that is at the center of the story wasn't typical and then our suspect wasn't typical either, reminded me that anyone can do bad things and anyone can have skills whether they fit the mold or not.

I was excited to find out after I finished this book that it was labeled as book number one in a series, because I would love so many more books with Agent Lisa Tanchik at the center.

The problem with writing novels based on current events is that, by the time the book is published, the events are no longer current. Black Nowhere features a Darknet site called Kyte. The author has clearly copied the real Silk Road Marketplace, a Darknet site launched in 2011 and shut down by the FBI in 2013. In this fictionalized story, the FBI is clueless about this sort of site existing on the Darknet, and so everything that happens in the story feels dated. If you don't know anything about the Darknet, you might be interested in this loosely fictionalized version of Silk Road. I was mostly annoyed by the similarities of the sites and the ignorance of the FBI.

Still, I persevered, hoping the story would surprise me. But the characters are flat and dull and stereotypical. Our heroine is a young woman who suffers from clinical depression. She self-medicates with various drugs and large amounts of alcohol kept in her water bottle. She's treated like crap by the FBI because she's young and female, but she somehow manages to put them all to shame while battling depression and addiction. The male lead is a college student based on Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road Marketplace. His character is childish and wholly unlikable.

The dialogue doesn't sound at all like that of twentysomething tech nerds. The interactions are stilted and dull.

I gave up at 35% on my Kindle.