- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Del Rey (30 May 2019)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1785038885
- ISBN-13: 978-1785038884
- Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 2.
Synopsis
When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course.
The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife – and parents of two – who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive but are the passengers all that they first seem?
Review
The Passengers is set in the future where only driverless cars are the main form of transport. But what happens if they could be hacked so someone can prove a point? well this is the premise of this fast paced and gripping thriller that sees John Marrs at his best. Eight cars with eight Passengers are taken hostage, at first they seem like random choices but as the hacker reveals all have a secret and have been chosen for a reason. Together with the public, a jury who looks into accidents with driverless cars must decide on one person to survive whilst the other seven die.
The Passengers is a tense, fast paced and utterly brilliant thriller. The premise of Artificial Intelligence controlling our cars plays on the human fear of not being in control and this is what makes this book so compelling. If you have read any of John Marrs’s books before you will know that nothing is at it originally seems. Each of the Passengers have been chosen for a reason and one by one these seemingly normal people open their lives to the public whilst the Hacker spills the secret they are keeping. As well as the Passengers the Hacker is also exposing the corrupt and unscrupulous MP Jack Larsson who heads the jury on accidents in Passenger cars. This Jury has to decide that who is to blame for these accidents, and as the book progresses this takes a sinister turn as to how these decisions are made.
Libby Dixon, a mental health nurse, is on the jury for that month and finds herself playing a pivotal part in this highjacking scenario. Not only does she have to decide who to save and who to let die is compromised when she knows one of the Passengers. I was really rooting for Libby as she was the only person who stood up to the hacker and also took on Jack Larsson who was rude, discriminatory and unscrupulous in his attitude of entitlement. The Passengers themselves are of various ages, ethnicity, and social backgrounds and certainly open the discussion of race, gender, age and cultural backgrounds in the quest of who should live.
The Passengers is a shocking, dark and gripping look at our future society. There were plenty of twists that I never saw coming and because of this the tension and suspense is kept throughout; nothing is as it first seems. I also liked that John Marrs included a nod to his previous book The One. I urge thriller lovers to go out and buy this book, it is an original, riveting and suspenseful read; bloody brilliant!!
I would like to thank Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers and Penguin Books for inviting me to take part in the blog tour for this book.
As always thank you for reading my review and ask if you can share the book love on social media.
