The Mansion

July 1, 2018

Having completely creeped us out with the "Hatching" series, Boone shows us that humans (and their technology) can be just as scary as spiders. Shawn Eagle and Billy Stafford parted ways long ago, and Shawn is now a multi-billion-dollar tech success, interested in resurrecting their old computer program Nellie, which they hoped could control a house's every function. But the newly installed Nellie seems to be wreaking bloody havoc.

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October 1, 2018
A crestfallen engineer reluctantly agrees to rejoin his former partner to troubleshoot a glitch-y artificial intelligence.There's a heavy dose of...let's call it homage...in this spooky ghost story that squeezes in an alcoholic creator, his terrified wife, two psychic children, and a macabre mansion located far from civilization. All that's missing is a little "redrum." Fortunately, Boone (Zero Day, 2018, etc.) is a terrific writer and, despite heavy shades of Stephen King's masterpiece The Shining, turns in a gripping horror novel that uses technology and psychological terror to alarming effect. The story: A decade or so ago, young programmers Billy Stafford and Shawn Eagle left college to hole up in a cabin near the Eagle family's long-abandoned mansion in a remote part of upstate New York. Their goal: to develop a cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Of course, there's a girl, Emily Wiggins, who ultimately leaves Shawn for Billy, forcing the band to break up. In the present day, Billy is a fragile, brittle alcoholic swimming in debt, barely hanging on to his remaining grace: his now-wife Emily. He's suspicious when Shawn, who's now a multibillionaire from the computing language Billy helped create, offers him a job. It turns out that Shawn has rebuilt his family's mansion, complete with "Nellie," the cutting-edge AI that Billy helped bring into existence. But the "ghost in the machine" is deeply, dangerously buggy. Billy and Emily move into the mansion to help decode Nellie's developing psyche. (Narrator voice: Bad things happen). If there's a drawback to Boone's story, it's that the ménage à trois at the story's center is composed of three pretty miserable individuals: a boy genius with a god complex; an addict with an inferiority complex, deep-seated rage, and severe guilt over a buried secret; and the girl who wonders if she chose the wrong horse. Regardless, it's a richly composed, very scary thriller that would be welcome squeezed between Neal Stephenson and Chuck Wendig on your bookshelf.A ghost story that could be described as the Overlook Hotel with Alexa onboard but is, thankfully, frightening in its own right.

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October 15, 2018
In this decent if flawed horror thriller from Boone (the Hatching trilogy), Billy Stafford and Shawn Eagle spend months together in a cabin near a derelict mansion Shawn owns in Upstate New York, developing the revolutionary software that will later become the cornerstone of Shawn’s multibillion-dollar tech company. Joining the two is Emily Wiggins, who’s at first Shawn’s girlfriend but eventually ends up marrying Billy. After parting from Shawn, Billy and Emily fall heavily into debt, and Billy hits the bottle. Two decades after those initial months in the cabin, Shawn offers the now sober Billy, who’s living in Seattle, a job, even knowing that Billy blames Shawn for his situation. Shawn has fixed up the mansion, but he needs Billy to complete the next generation of smart home software that they abandoned years ago. Billy can’t turn down the money, so he and Emily return to New York to begin work. Each gradually notices disconcerting inconsistencies in the software they are working on. Boone is slow, though, to move from creepy to terrifying, so that the final confrontation seems rushed. Despite the surfeit of backstory and uneven pacing, technophobes will enjoy this “bad computer” tale. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.