Method 15/33
by Shannon Kirk
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date May 05 2015 | Archive Date Mar 27 2017
Description
International Best-seller!
USA Today best-selling author
School Library Journal, Best Adult Books for Teens List 2015
Gold Winner in the IBPA Benjamin Franklin awards
Winner of 2015 National Indie Excellence Award For Suspense
Finalist Best New Fiction, USA Best Book Award
2015 ForeWord Reviews’ Indiefab Book of the Year Awards Finalist
Imagine a helpless, pregnant 16-year-old who's just been yanked from the serenity of her home and shoved into a dirty van. Kidnapped. Alone. Terrified. Now forget her. Picture instead a pregnant, 16-year-old, manipulative prodigy. She is shoved into a dirty van and, from the first moment of her kidnapping, feels a calm desire for two things: to save her unborn son and to exact merciless revenge. She is methodical calculating scientific in her plotting. A clinical sociopath? Leaving nothing to chance, secure in her timing and practice, she waits for the perfect moment to strike. Method 15/33 is what happens when the victim is just as cold as the captors.
The agents trying to find a kidnapped girl have their own frustrations and desires wrapped into this chilling drama. In the twists of intersecting stories, one is left to ponder. Who is the victim? Who is the aggressor?
Advance Praise
Publishers Weekly Starred Review:
"In Kirk’s harrowing first novel, a kidnap victim—16 years old and pregnant—meticulously plots her escape. Although locked in a sparsely furnished third-floor room of what she believes to be a white farmhouse, the nameless narrator is confident that she can turn the tables on her male captor (“I had the wits to beat this horrible, disgusting thing”). Her visitors include a doctor and a couple she calls Mr. and Mrs. Obvious, who intend to take her baby. Fueled by a desire for revenge, she carefully catalogues every possible asset that she might use: a loose floorboard is #4, a pencil sharpener is #15, and so on. Meanwhile, FBI special agent Roger Liu investigates the abduction case of Dorothy M. Salucci, another in a series of missing pregnant teens, and he tracks a slim lead to rural Indiana. Back at the farmhouse, the narrator sets out to rescue herself, and with great cunning and patience she carries out the plan she calls 15/33. Her willpower and ingenuity prove more than a match for the callous brutality of those who wish her ill as this exciting tale builds to a surprising climax." Agent: Kimberley Cameron, Kimberley Cameron & Associates. (May)
Reviewed on 03/06/2015 |"Method 15/33 is crowded with fascinating characters -- even the spear carriers pop off the page -- but the standout is the kidnapped pregnant teenager. Her captors want her baby. Little do they know they've brought an insanely brilliant, angry, vengeful, borderline sociopath under their roof. Somebody's in big trouble... and it isn't the teenager."
—F. Paul Wilson, New York Times best-selling author of Santa Jack
“Completely original and totally kick ass! Shannon Kirk pulls no punches in this adrenaline rush of a thriller where the victim is the one to watch, while the kidnappers learn to fear. Loved it! “
—Lisa Gardner, New York Times best-selling author of Fear Nothing
“What happens when infant traffickers kidnap the wrong pregnant teen? You get Method 15/33, a cross between The Lovely Bones and Silence of the Lambs. Shannon Kirk's debut thriller is a dark, literate page turner, utterly compelling. I read it in one sitting.”
— Leonard Rosen, Award-winning author of All Cry Chaos and The Tenth Witness
“Wow. Ridiculously good. Crazy good. Brilliantly heart-stoppingly nail-bitingly original, this is a true thriller tour de force. Shannon Kirk is an instant star.” —Hank Phillippi Ryan Agatha, Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark Award winning author of Truth be Told
Marketing Plan
National advertising campaign to include Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, ForeWord Reviews, Mystery Scene Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and targeted ROP
Author presentations and signings scheduled for Barnes & Noble in Peabody, MA, Boston, MA, Manchester, MA, Gloucester, MA, Portsmouth, MA, Rockport, MA, Manchester, NH, Portsmouth, NH, among other locations.
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9781608091454 |
PRICE | $26.95 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
If you read thrillers, run and get your hands on a copy of Method 15/33 by Shannon Kirk. I did think twice about reading this one. Was I really in the mood for another abduction story? In this case, a pregnant sixteen year old is pulled into an old van and driven for days....and that's where it stops being like anything else I've read. The book opens with the girl alone in a locked room, carefully listing every asset and assigning it a number. She is determined to keep her baby safe, to escape, and to exact her revenge. I read straight through, turning pages to find out just who this girl was and what was going to happen to her. And was surprised when I thought the story was coming to an end and realized that I still had half of the book to go. (One of the quirks of reading things on the Kindle is that you don't have a constant physical indication of your progress.)
What a great read!
An incredible first novel with a heroine reminding me very much of Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce, not just in her manipulative and dispassionate outlook and scientific precision but also in her surprisingly mature thought processes and her ability - in this case, genetic - to restrict her emotional reactions.
Although she may switch her emotions on and off, that doesn't prevent her feeling them, or feeling guilt or regret, so we never feel alienated by this strange narrator; rather, she allows us to watch - through her eyes - with amused detachment, while still firmly supporting her and rooting for her victory.
Her identity remains a mystery for most of the book, although you know that somehow she was rescued and survived because she's recalling the events of seventeen years ago, making the mystery *how* rather than *whether*. But if nothing else, she is a normal mother, fearing, loving and hoping as all good mothers do.
ARC to review.
Why don't we use the word "rip-roaring" anymore? Because this was one rip-roaring thriller and I adored it....not that it's the Great American Novel, but because I couldn't put it down.
The book is written in alternate, journalish points of view by a pregnant teenager who has been abducted and by the lead detective on her case. Oh, and the girl, our heroine is a sociopath. And the detective, our hero "sees" things in a way similar to hyperthymesia (those people who can remember what exactly what they were doing on March 12, 2000). There isn't much to say that wouldn't be spoilerish, since you know that it's a race against time story, but it's well-written, interesting, has wonderful secondary characters (I adored Lola and Boyd).
Thriller fan? Pick this one up when it's published. You definitely won't regret it.
Tense thriller about a kidnapped pregnant 16 year old. She's not meek and mild.....
Highly recommended!
I've never heard of this author before, but thought the book looked interesting so I gave it a shot. Turned out to be a very good book. I especially liked how the author described a captive's thinking process. Highly recommended. (I tried, but could not review this one on Amazon because it has not been released yet. I will be happy to put my review on Amazon if the publisher will e-mail me a reminder to do so after it is released.)
Readers who liked this book also liked:
Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara
Biographies & Memoirs, Children's Nonfiction, Professional & Technical