This book is the first novel in a new series by Jeffrey Deaver, introducing Colter Shaw who is a “reward-seeker” who just travels looking for missing persons to help find. A college student is missing in Silicon Valley and he takes the job. The investigation takes him into the heart of Silicon Valley and the billion-dollar video gaming industry. After the second victim is murdered it appears that an attempt to play for real the video game called The Never Game where the player has to survive after being left abandoned is acted out in real life.
The game provides clues: “You have been abandoned.” Colter finds the missing girl abandoned in an old building.
Another clue is to “Escape” if you can.” The game The Whispering Man is identified as the model for the crimes where the victim is left with five random objects left in a dangerous remote setting.
The victim is expected to use the objects left to escape “Or die with dignity.” In the investigation we meet eccentric game designers and dangerous gamers.
The Never Game brings uses the gaming industry to weave a unique plot that twists and turns and likely will serve to make Colter Shaw and interesting star in the new series by Jeffery Deaver.
Quotes
"She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder."
"I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen-whether I'm working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book-it's usually because I'm trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place."
"My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about."
"Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise."