Transcription by Ben Lerner

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on April 7, 2026

The unnamed narrator of Transcription has been engaged by a magazine to interview an author and filmmaker named Thomas. The narrator is 45. As a younger man, he came to admire Thomas while taking one of his classes. The narrator was also a college friend of Thomas’ son Max. Thomas is now 90 and the miraculous survivor of a COVID infection. The interview is something of a coup as Thomas has not given one in years. This one will be his last.

At his hotel in Providence, the narrator FaceTimes his daughter Eva before dropping his phone into a sink full of water. If he buys a new iPhone, he’ll be late to his appointment with Thomas. And he can’t call Thomas from the room phone to explain his tardiness because the number is stored in his dead phone. The role that smartphones play in modern life is a recurring theme.

The narrator realizes how dependent he is on his phone (or as the blurbs suggest, Ben Lerner is illustrating how devices control our lives) when he can’t summon an Uber. He opts to walk to Thomas’ building without the hell of an app. “I would typically start walking directions on the map— even though I knew the way.” He talks about experiencing a “withdrawal” from his phone that sparks a sharper awareness of his surroundings.

The narrator had been planning to record the interview but, lacking any other recording device, decides to have a preliminary chat with Thomas and to record the interview the following day after purchasing a new phone. Unfortunately for him, Thomas objects that all their words should be recorded. “Otherwise we repeat ourselves and it grows unnatural. We will sound like bad actors. Even the transcript will show that we have rehearsed.”

The narrator pretends to record the interview because he is too embarrassed to admit that he drowned his phone. That incident provides context for the rest of the novel. I take it from the blurbs that the story encourages readers to consider the relationship between words recorded on devices and those recorded in our memories, or between a transcript and a reconstruction. I was more engaged by Ben Lerner’s use of Thomas’ deceit as the foundation for an ethical inquiry: is it acceptable for the narrator, having deceived Thomas, to fail to disclose to his audience that some of the article he will write is based on his memory rather than a literal transcript of the interview?

The novel’s first part recounts the unrecorded conversation. It is the stuff of high-level intellect. Thomas discusses radio and the nature of sound as experienced in the womb, the Hezbollah bomb at the Rue de Rennes in 1986, childhood addictions to devices with screens (“I am a partisan of the new, but only when it admits distance”), memory and misremembered events, and a dozen other topics.

Perhaps the conversation is a bit pretentious, but that might be my insecure reaction to intellectual chitchat. Thomas says things like “All light is social” or “A problem with Freud is he thinks we dream only our own dreams” and my reaction is, Dude, what does that even mean?

In an interesting twist, Thomas mentions people (including Max and Max’s dead mother) he won’t talk about while he’s being recorded, not knowing that he is free to speak because the recording is an illusion. Is the absence of recording important because Thomas wants to preserve deniability of his unflattering opinions of family members?

The novel’s second section takes place after the narrator’s account of the interview has been published. This section is set in Spain. The narrator has just given a talk at a museum where Rosa, one of the curators, was “intensely devoted” to Thomas. The narrator creates an unintended scandal by telling a self-effacing story about ruining his phone and pretending to record part of the interview. Rosa insists that he “more or less confessed that you falsified a big part of what many of us thought of as his last, I don’t know, testament. A deepfake.” The narrator protests that all journalists edit and often reconstruct their interviews, but Rosa reminds him that he is not a journalist. In her view, the interview “was conducted under false pretenses. That’s what you revealed.”

In the last section, the narrator conducts another interview, this time with Max. Technology again enters the story as Max talks about his father’s hospitalization with COVID and their attempt to communicate in a failed Zoom call followed by a more successful voice call.

Max gives a lengthy account of his attempt to address his daughter Emmie’s eating disorder. He felt shame at the term “failure to thrive” and its implication that he was remiss in providing Emmie with adequate nutrition, but Emmie could not be persuaded to eat until, in desperation, they let her eat whatever she wanted. Even then, she only demonstrated a normal appetite when they let her eat without putting her screen down. The (perhaps frightening) importance that modern children attach to screens has been part of public discourse for several years, but Lerner’s clever illustration of the phenomenon is one of the smartest I’ve seen in fiction.

Some of the story may have passed over my head, but it is a testament to Lerner’s skill that I never lost interest in it, even as I tried to puzzle out its meaning. The fluidity of Lerner’s prose likely accounts for my engagement with a story in which nothing much happens. At times, disconnected events seem to flow together, representing (I assume) distortions of memory, or the ability of memory to transport us into a different time, or the ability of misremembered events to change the past as we understand it. Readers in search of a short novel with literary heft will find much to admire in Transcription, as will readers who take an interest in the malleable nature of memory and the role that screens play in modern life.

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Revenge Prey by John Sandford

Published by  ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons on April 7, 2026

Revenge Prey is the 36th entry in the Prey series. I’ve read most of them and have never been disappointed. While some are more gripping than others, I always enjoy them. John Sandford meets that standard in Revenge Prey. The action gets an early start and never lets up, but the plot avoids the eye-rolling heroic deeds that have come to characterize modern thrillers.

Leonard Summers, his wife Martha, and their son Bernard defected from Russia. Formerly known as the Sokolov family, they have been given new identities and a house in Minnesota. The CIA is using the U.S. Marshal’s office for witness protection, but Putin has ordered Leonard’s death so the witness protection agents need backup from someone who has experience with shootouts. Lucas Davenport is in one or two shootouts in every book, so he gets the assignment.

Davenport meets CIA Agent John Sherwood as the Sokolov family arrives at their new residence. As the Sokolovs investigate the house, a shooter tries to take out Leonard. Davenport springs into the novel’s first shootout as he engages a Russian hit squad.

More gun battles ensue as the Russians make additional attempts to assassinate Leonard. The Russians always seem to know where Leonard will be, so Davenport and Sherwood suspect that a leak needs to be plugged in one of their agencies. The nifty resolution of the leaker’s identity adds a surprising twist to the story.

This is very much a Lucas Davenport story, with only the briefest cameos by his friend Virgil Flowers and daughter Letty (they each star in their own thriller series). Davenport is partnered with Shelly White, a fellow U.S. Marshal, but she doesn’t contribute as much banter as Sandford’s better supporting characters.

Sherwood is a better supporting character. He’s snarky, smart, competent, horny, and capable of ruthless action. He vibes well with Davenport. Sherwood is in touch with Letty near the novel's end, so I suspect Sandford will bring him back, perhaps in a Letty Davenport novel.

The Russians also benefit from strong characterization. The government guards Leonard more carefully after the first assassination attempt, so the two assassins have accepted the risk of being outgunned as they continue their efforts to kill him. The third Russian is a sleeper agent providing logistical support. He enjoys the benefits of American life and isn’t looking forward to being recalled to Moscow if the mission doesn’t end well. Each character is convincing. Sandford even makes it possible to feel a measure of sympathy for the Russians, if it’s possible to work up such feelings for assassins.

The plot moves quickly, in part because Revenge Prey is an action story. The plot is not much more than a vehicle for Davenport to get into gunfights. Sandford doesn’t complicate the story in a way that would slow its pace, but he fills the pages with interesting characters and offbeat dialog. If you like Sandford, you’ll probably like Revenge Prey.

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The Survivor by Andrew Reid

Published by Minotaur Books on March 24, 2026

The best thrillers tell stories of ordinary people who are thrust into extraordinary situations. I enjoy thrillers about tough guys who use their superheroic tough guy skills to outpunch and outgun bad guys, but they never have the impact of thrillers that require ordinary people to gain courage or make other changes that will help them defeat evil.

Ben Cross is not an ordinary person, but he’s not a tough guy. He might not even be one of the good guys. He initially seems to be a young man who is down on his luck. Ben appears to have been lured into a dangerous situation for reasons he doesn’t understand. Only as the story progresses does the reader learn that Ben is not necessarily the innocent victim he appears to be. To survive, Ben must come to terms with his past and find the courage to seize control of his life.

The novel’s premise is simple. Ben met a contact at a job fair who invited him to an interview for a boring but well-paid office position that would embroil him in a world of spreadsheets. Ben wanted a fresh start and was thrilled to be offered the job, but he was fired on his first day.

Ben walks to the subway, wondering whether he will lose the deposit on his new apartment. While Ben is riding on the train, someone texts him a photo of a man whose throat has been slit. Additional messages insist that Ben knows the sender and imply that the sender knows about Ben’s past.

Ben then receives a picture of another subway passenger. The accompanying message tells him that if he allows the man to leave the train, the man will die. Ben assumes he’s being pranked so he does nothing when the man departs at the next stop. The man takes only a few steps into the station before someone shoots him.

Further texts tell Ben not to get off the train, not to block the sender’s number, not to ignore the sender’s messages. Ben follows those instructions because he wants to learn what’s happening. He receives another picture with another instruction not to let the passenger leave the train. Ben finds the woman in the photo and tries to persuade her to listen, but she assumes he is dangerous and other passengers restrain him as she leaves. An explosion soon follows.

The novel’s other central character is Detective Kelly Hendricks. Kelly is a police detective who recently threw a police chief across a table after he put his hand on her butt. She was rewarded with a career-ending assignment as liaison to the Transit Authority. She describes the job as “following the mole people around on the subway.”

Kelly is on her way to the subway when she hears gunshots and sees people fleeing from the subway tunnels. The train is gone but the victim’s lifeless body is on the ground. When an explosion occurs at another station, Kelly makes her way there to discover that Homeland Security is leading the investigation. The agent in charge is rooting for a bigger explosion to impress upon the citizenry the threat of terrorism — particularly if he can take credit for capturing the bomber.

The train stops after the explosion. The rest of the story follows Kelly as she boards the train, tries to figure out Ben’s role in the crime, and jousts with Homeland Security about the proper role of law enforcement. In the process, she learns that Ben’s father is a serial killer and that Ben is carrying a dark secret about an event that occurred when he was eleven.

Is Ben a good guy or a bad guy? During most of the novel, I was undecided. Preserving that ambiguity for so long assures that the reader remains engaged with the plot.

Someone clearly wants to make trouble for Ben, but the identity of that person comes as a genuine surprise. While Ben’s dad suffers from obvious mental health problems, the story asks whether a victim's intense desire for revenge might itself be a form of mental illness.

The plot is implausible but no more so than is typical of a modern crime novel. The story’s rapid pace, avoidance of formulaic plotting, and reliance on ordinary people to carry the story makes it easy to recommend.

Andrew Reid’s prose is vivid. I’m inured to the violence in crime fiction but I found a horrific chapter difficult to read. Fortunately, I had that reaction only to one brief scene. Sensitive readers might want to give The Survivor a pass. For thriller fans who have the stomach for it, novel’s blend of psychological and actual horror makes this one of the more chilling crime stories I’ve encountered in recent memory.

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Under Water by Tara Menon

Published by Riverhead Books on March 17, 2026

Under Water is a story of friendship and loss. In the present (2012), Marissa lives in New York. In the past (2004), Marissa lived in Thailand. The chapters alternate between the two years. Although the action in each location unfolds over a couple of days, Marissa’s first-person narrative fills in the essential background of her life.

Marissa was born to parents who grew up in New York but met in the Philippines. Her mother, a marine biologist, died in a car accident when she was six. After her death, Marissa's father accepted an invitation to stay with one of her mother’s colleagues, Rosalind Watkins, on an uninhabited island near Phuket where she set up a research station to study manta rays. Her father managed the lab, supervised visiting grad students, and did some cooking.

Marissa’s best friend was Arielle, whose wealthy mother was gifted a hotel in Phuket when she married a man of limited means. Marissa and Arielle developed the kind of intense friendship that is a phenomenon of youth. Both girls loved the water. They spent most of their days swimming with manta rays, but Marissa likes to party in Phuket on the weekends. Arielle would prefer to stay on the island but usually agrees to join Marissa in Phuket.

Water and death are pervasive themes. The story in both time frames is filled with wet weather and allusions to natural disasters around the world. The story’s bookends are wet weather events — a tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, Hurricane Sandy in New York in 2012.

In Marissa’s world, water seems to symbolize both life and death. The ocean is alive with fish and coral, but by 2012, ocean life is starting to die. Arielle is alive in 2004 but appears only in Marissa’s memory in 2012. The specifics of her death are revealed late in the novel but often foreshadowed, so the reader knows that Arielle will drown. Marissa will spend the next years blaming herself because Arielle would still be alive if Marissa had not insisted that they spend the weekend in Phuket.

Tara Menon’s vivid descriptions of the tsunami and its aftermath are so chilling in their realism that I wondered whether she had herself survived one. She grew up in Singapore, so she at least has personal experience with tropical storms. The novel’s convincing portrayal of the chaotic environment in Phuket during the tsunami contributes to its power.

The New York story explores the impact Arielle’s death had on Marissa. She works as a copy editor and exists as a loner. She regularly picks up men for sex but not if they approach her before she invites the approach. Perhaps Marissa suffers from PTSD, but when she looks up the symptoms, Facebook begins to display targeted ads for aromatherapy and gravity blankets. The Facebook experience is one of many small moments that help the reader connect with Marissa’s life.

The story usually moves quickly, but Menon spends too much time dispensing facts about manta rays in Thailand and quaker parrots in Central Park. A lengthy list of fish that Marissa sees while swimming is a bit too tedious to stand as a worthwhile contribution to the novel’s atmosphere.

Fortunately, Menon finds more effective ways to help the reader visualize life in Thailand. She riffs on the thousand daily changes of color in the ocean and explains why Homer never used “blue” to describe the sea. Her most interesting riff explores the notion that climate change is imagined as a catastrophic event, when “most of the time devastation is quiet, subtle, humdrum.” Reefs gradually turn white as coral dies; populations of fish slowly thin. Nothing happens that humans regard as dramatic until until humans start to die.

But the novel is not a political tome about global warming. It is a very personal account of friendship, loss and regret. Although much of the story lives in Marissa’s memory, Menon keeps it in motion and steadily builds momentum until it reaches its climax. The moving aftermath slows the pace, giving the reader time to process the emotions that Menon sparks. This is a nicely crafted work of literature and, as a debut novel, a promising start to a career.

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The Dark Time by Nick Petrie

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on March 10, 2026

Peter Ash is the tough guy in this tough guy thriller series. Having served as a Recon Marine in combat zones, he has the usual tough guy credentials. When the series began, his PTSD was so intense that he risked a panic attack if he slept indoors (or even ventured inside a building). An “Oregon shrink” taught him some coping mechanisms. Now he’s in a relationship with June Cassidy, a veteran reporter.

June has a older friend, also a journalist, named KT Thorsen. KT received a note instructing her to stop her investigations and threatening to kill her and her daughter Eleanor. The note also says “We are watching. We are Legion.” KT is working on several investigations and doesn’t know which one prompted the threat. KT takes a photo of the note and sends it to June, who promptly asks her to share her cellphone location and promises to have Ash check up on her.

Ash arrives just in time to save KT when she is attacked by a gunman. He takes KT and Eleanor to a cheap motel, but another gunman — this one a bit more professional — tracks them down. He kills KT but Ash manages to save Eleanor.

Ash isn’t adept at interacting with 13-year-old girls, but Eleanor refuses to leave his side. Ash believes she is still in danger and doesn’t want to leave her with a social worker, so he takes her to stay with his friend Manny Martinez and his wife and kids. Manny was one of Peter’s platoon sergeants in Iraq and is a tough guy on his own merit.

Ash enlists the help of another buddy, a former criminal and current tough guy named Lewis. When Lewis takes Ash on a trip to purchase some unregistered weapons, trouble breaks out, giving Ash and Lewis a chance to show off their combat skills. The black market weapons supplier has been making armor-piercing ammunition, a task that requires more sophisticated equipment than northwestern hillbillies should be able to buy.

Naturally, the bad guys will track down Eleanor. They kidnap her along with Manny’s wife. Much of the story focuses on June's attempts to locate the place where the kidnappers have stashed them, as well as the nick-of-time heroics of Ash, Manny, Lenny, and a security guard who joins forces with them to save the world.

The novel’s mysteries are the nature of the story KT was investigating, the identity of the principal bad guy, and the evil deed the bad guy intends to unleash. Without revealing anything significant, it is fair to say that the evil deed involves an attempt to accelerate the biblical “end times.” The principle bad guy turns out to be something of a cult leader. Ash discovers a link between that plot and the armor piercing shells that the hillbillies were manufacturing.

I had difficulty buying into the bad guys’ ability to orchestrate their planned societal collapse by their chosen means. While far-fetched, the plot is no more outlandish than is typical for a modern action thriller.

Propelled by strong action scenes, the story moves quickly. Eleanor’s snark adds some comic relief while her mother’s death contributes emotional weight to the story.

Because of his struggle with PTSD, Ash has a bit more personality than is typical of a tough guy protagonist. He is extremely capable but doesn’t perform the superheroic deeds of tough guy heroes who defeat twenty thugs in a shootout. I always appreciate tough guy action heroes who don’t act like The Batman without a cape and cowl.

No Peter Ash novel has disappointed me, although some have had more credible (and thus more entertaining) plots than The Dark Time. Given that believable plots have become optional for modern action thrillers, I recommend the novel for Nick Petrie’s ability to craft convincing characters and strong action scenes.

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