Nearshore by Steve Hawk

 About the Book:

Daybreak. West Virginia. A “small” nuclear bomb detonates beside an Appalachian highway. The weapon’s explosive yield is meager, the death count blessedly low. And yet: It is history’s first act of nuclear terrorism, and it threatens to tilt the world beyond reckoning.

Months later, surfer and lifeguard Jamie Palmer is patrolling his domain, a treacherous stretch of wild California coast, when he responds to a mysterious nearshore boating accident that jettisoned two people overboard. The victims turn out to be Palmer’s best friend—a brilliant, renegade Stanford University professor—and the man’s teenage son, Luca. The professor drowns, Luca survives—leaving Palmer as the boy’s guardian.

Soon after, Chelsea Wu, a math prodigy and doctoral student, confides to Palmer that she and the professor unearthed a link between a Silicon Valley megacorporation, its sociopathic billionaire founder, and the nuke in West Virginia. When a second device is detonated, this unlikely team—the surfer, the orphan, and the math whiz—must persuade investigators that the bombmakers are not only homegrown but also hiding in plain sight.

An immersive and disturbingly plausible debut, Nearshore delivers a mix of literary suspense and coastal noir. Moving with the speed of a barreling wave, Nearshore also explores deeper clashes: isolation versus community and family, Silicon Valley versus humanity, words versus action, land versus sea.

My Review:

Wealth brings with it the possibility of creating nuclear havoc. Add a political element and there is the possibility of domestic terrorism. Shades of extreme movement in the current political scene. A surfer becomes a force to save the day. I am not familiar with surfing and there was some things I did not understand in that area. But I did like the idea of a regular sort of fellow foiling a billionaire's plan. There was also quite a bit about nuclear weapons and I trust the author did his research. The writing was good for a debut novel and the plot generally moved along well. Some of the plot may have been beyond belief but then, it is fiction.

My rating: 4/5 stars.

Viking, 352 pages.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent review.

(My star ratings: 5-An exceptional book, 4-Better than average, relevant and liked by me, 3-It is average, 2-It is below average and not liked by me, 1-It is practically unreadable.)