Delirious
Charlie Giles, inventor of a new digital-entertainment system for automobiles, is stunned when his life abruptly falls to pieces around him. After being publicly humiliated by a seemingly self-destructive stunt at a high-level meeting, Charlie says he was set up by a colleague who, apparently, doesn’t exist. Then he’s fired from his company after an audit reveals that he used his computer to access pornographic web sites; he swears he never did, but the evidence is conclusive. Fearing he could be losing his mind, Charlie turns to his brother, Joe, who suffers from schizophrenia, for advice. But when Charlie’s former colleagues start getting murdered, he realizes that whatever is happening isn’t going on entirely inside his own head. This is a solid, well-constructed thriller, nicely convoluted and definitely suspenseful. It’s Palmer’s first novel, but he has a good pedigree: his father is medical-thriller author Michael Palmer. But if this book is any indication, Daniel Palmer will carve out his own literary identity without too much trouble. --David Pitt