The Last Hack

It is one of the cardinal rules of hacking, and not since Lisbeth Salander famously violated it in Stieg Larsson's Millennium series has the maxim been so compellingly broken as in "The Last Hack," the new Jack Parlabane thriller from one of the smartest minds in crime fiction, Christopher Brookmyre. Sam Morpeth has had to grow up way too fast. Left to fend for a younger sister with learning difficulties when their mother goes to prison, she is forced to watch her dreams of university evaporate. But Sam learns what it is to be truly powerless when a stranger begins to blackmail her online. Meanwhile, reporter Jack Parlabane seems to have finally gotten his career back on track with a job at a flashy online news start-up, but his success has left him indebted to a volatile source on the wrong side of the law. Now that debt is being called in, and it could cost him everything. Thrown together by a common enemy, Sam and Jack are about to discover they have more in common than they realize-and might be each other's only hope.