Blackout

by Marc Elsberg

Overview

"Fast, tense, thrilling — and timely: this will happen one day. Highly recommended." —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series

This is no accident.

This is no act of God.

This is a Blackout.

When the lights go out one night, no one panics. Not yet. The lights always come back on soon, don't they? Surely it's a glitch, a storm, a malfunction. But something seems strange about this night. Across Europe, controllers watch in disbelief as electrical grids collapse. There is no power, anywhere.

A former hacker and activist, Piero investigates a possible cause of the disaster. The authorities don't believe him, and he soon becomes a prime suspect himself. With the United States now also at risk, Piero goes on the run with Lauren Shannon, a young American CNN reporter based in Paris, desperate to uncover who is behind the attacks. After all, the power doesn't just keep the lights on—it keeps us alive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492654698
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	802,906
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Marc Elsberg is a former creative director in advertising. His debut thriller BLACKOUT is a frighteningly plausible drama of an international blackout caused by a hacker attack. An instant bestseller in Germany, it has sold over a million copies and has been translated worldwide. Marc Elsberg lives in Vienna, Austria.

Editorial Reviews

06/05/2017
Europe is plunged into darkness, followed by further disasters, in Elsberg’s U.S. debut, an uneven thriller, which was a bestseller in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The blackout, which starts in Italy and is caused by computer hackers with vague dreams of disrupting the world order, quickly spreads north. Elsberg does a good job capturing how life could break down when we lose our main power source. Within days, food riots erupt in major cities, all forms of transportation and communication cease, nuclear power plants leak radiation, and some governments fall to military coups. The plot is told largely through vignettes of various groups of people and their individual struggles. Central among the book’s characters are former hacker and activist Piero Manzano and CNN reporter Lauren Shannon. Together, Piero and Lauren try to find the cause of the power loss, though for a while the authorities suspect that they are involved themselves. The plot’s tension suffers, however, because so little of the story is devoted to the culprits behind the disaster and their intentions. The story’s high point is a one-page shoving match toward the end when one of the hackers is wrestled to the ground and taken into custody. Readers might expect more pop after an entire continent is brought to its knees. Agent: Helen Edwards, Transworld Publishers. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Fast, tense, thrilling - and timely: this will happen one day. Highly recommended." — Lee Child

"Blackout is truly terrifying in its all-too-realistic premise. The action jumps from country to country as the blackout spreads, racing towards an ending which is absolutely lights-out." — Sandra Block, ITW Thriller Award finalist and author of Little Black Lies and The Girl Without a Name

"Marc Elsberg's brilliantly written techno-thriller vividly shows how terrorists, instead of using guns and bombs, can sit at a keyboard and use computer code to bring the world to its knees." — Charles Belfoure, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Architect and House of Thieves

"…intriguing and authentic, Blackout crackles with tension." — Grant Blackwood, New York Times bestselling author

"Part Dan Brown–style chase and part eco-thriller, this debut—a best-seller in Germany—will get people talking." — Booklist

"lsberg delivers a thrilling read and sucks readers into a mind-boggling, all too scary world." — Library Journal

From the Publisher

05/01/2017
First published in Germany, this frighteningly plausible best-selling technothriller comes to English-speaking readers for the first time. After consulting intelligence and computer security experts, Elsberg meticulously details what could believably happen when a terrorist group cuts off the power in our technology-enabled, interconnected world. Piero Manzano, a former hacker and activist, teams up with Lauren Shannon, an American CNN reporter based in Paris, to uncover the truth behind the blackout as they cross the continent in the most horrendous conditions. This earnest and watertight conceptualization raises questions on the security of the world's power supplies. VERDICT Elsberg delivers a thrilling read and sucks readers into a mind-boggling, all too scary world. [See Prepub Alert, 2/1/17.]—Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Library Journal