Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart

Published by Random House on January 13, 2026

The first thing to know about Detour is that it ends with a cliffhanger. The novel is the first in a series. I have no idea how many more books it will take to conclude the story.

The good news is that the first installment does not have the kind of padding that writers sometimes use to boost the word count of books that do not tell self-contained stories. The action moves quickly and, while cliffhangers are frustrating, Detour left me looking forward to the next installment. I appreciated the fact that I never knew where the story was going. Now, unfortunately, I need to wait to find out.

Detour begins as a story of space flight, with the intriguing element of a voyager being asked to take a mysterious envelope on the journey. The flight itself, while eventful, occupies a small part of the story. The last third of the novel sees the space travelers return to an Earth that has changed in ways both subtle and dramatic during their absence. Or is it the travelers who have changed?

A key character in Detour is the richest man in the world. He owns a company that engages in space travel. Sound like real-world person who has been in the news? I don’t know if Jeff Rake and Rob Hart intended to model the character on a real-world figure, but his rich man — John Ward — is not a good person. He’s also running for president as an independent.

Ward wants to colonize Saturn’s moon Titan. He has constructed a spaceship in orbit around the Earth. Its first voyage will transport six people to Titan, where they will deploy a satellite to gather data about Titan. The ship’s ion drive will let them make the trip and return in about two years.

Ward chooses three civilians to crew the ship, along with three astronauts from NASA (Mike Seaver, Alonso Cardona, and Della Jameson). The civilians have no experience with space flight. Padma Singh is a doctoral candidate who wrote a paper about Titan that persuaded Ward to colonize it. Ryan Crane is a cop who saved Ward from an assassination. Courtney “Stitch” Smith, a graffiti artist, won a lottery to join the crew. Ward is paying them each at least $20 million to take the trip.  Ryan is paid a bit extra to carry (but not open) an envelope for Ward.

It might seem odd to send three civilians into space with three career astronauts, particularly when the civilians are expected to learn enough in a short period to function as astronauts in an emergency. The early story is about team building, although it’s really about character development.

The characters are carefully defined. Some gain depth through their various family issues. Stitch will leave behind his domineering mother; Mike says a tearful goodbye to his children (and to a  wife who is on the verge of divorcing him because of his drinking problem); Della is leaving her two kids with her mom because she only trusts her cheating ex with supervised visits twice a month; Alonso is leaving behind his wife and the gay man he secretly loves; Ryan is leaving behind his disabled son but wants to believe Ward’s promise to find a neurologist who will help his son walk. Padma’s personality is shaped by her PTSD; Stitch’s by his disdain for the conventional; Ryan’s by his drinking.

The trip to Titan begins to go wrong when the ship departs from its programmed course. The travelers think they have corrected the problem when more issues arise, including explosions. What exploded? The answer is unclear.

When the crewmembers are back on Earth, they find that their problems have only begun. Ward does his best to keep them separated after they return. What is it he doesn’t want them to discover?

The story’s central mystery concerns the events that happened in space — an explosion has apparently been erased from the ship’s logs — and the reasons for the changes that the characters observe after their return. Before the mission, each principle character made choices, good or bad, that defined their lives. When they return, choices they made are different. Those choices alter who they are. Perhaps that is the novel’s deeper point.

The big reveal needs to explain the changes that the characters experience, the hidden report that Ward wants to keep buried, and the contents of the envelope that Ryan carried into space. Unfortunately, the reveal will await a future installment. The first was sufficiently entertaining that I’m looking forward to reading the next.

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The Warehouse by Rob Hart

Published by Crown on August 20, 2019

Many books, both fiction and nonfiction, have condemned the corporatization of America, the loss of worker’s rights, or the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a shrinking few. Presidential candidates who have a chance to get elected are even talking about those issues (only to be condemned as radical by those who depend on the shrinking few for financial support). The Warehouse is an entertaining, near-future look at the consequences of allowing the top 1% to make policies that govern the rest of us.

The Warehouse is based on a company called Cloud, because Rob Hart would have been sued if he called it Amazon. It was founded by Gibson Wells, who might be even wealthier than Jeff Bezos, and is certainly older and (I assume) more devious. In an era of budget–tightening in industry and government, the unemployed are flocking to Cloud for monotonous, tiring, underpaid jobs (the kind of jobs that Amazon warehouse workers perform). Some of them worked for companies that were put out of business by Cloud’s predatory practices. In fact, Cloud is pretty much the only retail store that matters, the box stores having been run out of town by the convenience of online ordering and drone shipping.

The Warehouse is set a few years in the future, when global warming is having its predicted impact on the planet. Cloud is a throwback to corporate towns; employees live in dorm rooms provided by Cloud so they can focus on working rather than commuting. In exchange for discounted housing and healthcare, they earn less than minimum wage thanks to a business–friendly Congress. Deductions from meager wages are made for a variety of reasons, including the failure to make quotas. Workers wear watches that track their location and production. In fact, they can’t leave their dorm rooms without wearing the watch, even on their own time.

Gibson is an old-fashioned robber baron who relies on bromides to mask his self-interest. “Regulations are bad” because they keep him from doing all the awful things he wants to do. “Hard work is good” if the hard workers are filling his pockets with profits. “Privatization is efficient” because his control of newly privatized services efficiently increases his wealth. He views himself as “exceptional” so customary standards of human behavior, not to mention laws, cannot be expected to stand in the way of his achievements.

Gibson is dying of cancer and is blogging his final year of life, during which he intends to visit all 100 MotherClouds (fulfillment centers) so he can say hello to all his employees before he dies. He also blogs his self-aggrandizing ideas. He pats himself on the back for creating jobs when the jobs are crappy and employees are treated like slaves. He is virulently opposed to unions and thinks his “rating” system to overwork his underpaid employees is brilliant. Ebenezer Scrooge might agree.

The two key characters, Zinnia and Paxton, both make the hiring cut. They both have ulterior motives for taking the job. Zinnia is a corporate spy. Cloud claims to be energy independent but its wind farms and solar panels seem incapable of generating the necessary power. Zinnia has been hired to find the source of the power that Cloud doesn’t want to disclose for fear of losing its green tax breaks. What she actually finds, on several different fronts, casts Cloud in an even less favorable light.

Paxton tried to patent his own idea but was screwed over by Cloud. After working as a prison guard, he views a job at Cloud as temporary but essential to his survival. He hated being a prison guard so he is, of course, assigned to security. Naturally, his life intersects with Zinnia’s. He is smitten, while she is happy to develop an unwitting source for information about Cloud security. A reader will see where that plotline is going and will be either pleased or disappointed to learn that it does not deviate from expectations. The predictability didn’t bother me because I enjoyed the novel less for its plot than for its detailed imagining of the future of retail that Amazon might soon inspire.

The Warehouse argues that free people don’t have to accept the lives that are assigned to them by corporate masters. “At least I have a job” doesn’t justify being treated like garbage. Free people can fight for something better. Whether Zinnia’s way of fighting is the best way might be a question that readers debate, but she at least opens minds to the possibility of change. The novel’s underlying lesson is that compassion and fairness are more important than security and comfort. As important as security and comfort might be, they should not be achieved by sacrificing the security and comfort of others.

The Warehouse is also an indictment of:  big businesses that use their economic might to drive small businesses out of the marketplace; big businesses that use their economic might to patent and control ideas developed by small businesses; and big businesses that use their economic might to convince people that big businesses act in the best interests of their employees and customers when they are only acting to further the interests of controlling shareholders. The story targets Amazon but it could just as easily target Purdue Pharma or Wal Mart or Johnson & Johnson or Wells Fargo or Ford Motors.

Readers who disagree with those propositions won’t like the book. Most other readers should enjoy it. Despite its predictable moments, the plot is lively and Paxton is a sympathetic protagonist who confronts a personal crisis in a way that readers can admire. It is the future that Hart builds, however, that makes The Warehouse memorable.

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