A Lina Connerly Novel
When teenagers disappear from an affluent Silicon Valley suburb, a widowed FBI agent teams up with a local cop to solve the crimes.
The first book in the FBI Agent Lina Connerly series.
“Gripping, frightening, swift as a bullet. The last hundred pages could give you whiplash.”
Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Escaping New York City and the espionage case that made her question everything, recently widowed FBI agent Lina Connerly returns home to sell the house she has inherited in tony Greenfield, California. With her teenage son Rory, Lina hopes to reassemble her life, reevaluate her career, and find a clear way forward. Adrift and battling insomnia, she discovers that her father’s sleepy hometown has been transformed into a Silicon Valley suburb on steroids, obsessed with an annual exam called The Wonder Test.
When students at her son’s high school go missing, reappearing under mysterious circumstances on abandoned beaches, Lina must summon her strength and her investigative instincts, pushing her own ethical boundaries to the limits in order to solve the crimes. Meanwhile, an old espionage case called Red Vine keeps calling her back into the fold. While Lina struggles to balance her new role as a single mother and the complex counterintelligence puzzles she is so adept at solving, Greenfield’s shadowy dangers creep closer to her own home.
A searing view of a culture that puts the wellbeing of children at risk for advancement and prestige, and a captivating story of the lengths a mother will go for her son.
Excerpt
The Wonder Test
By Michelle Richmond
We ride the elevator in silence, emerging on the third floor. The company has revamped an old warehouse, making stylish use of exposed beams and concrete floors. There are no offices, no cubicles, just a series of cafeterias and conference rooms enclosed in glass walls. We step into a café, quiet save for the clicking of laptop keyboards. Nicole leads us to a dimly lit booth, and Kyle and I slide in side by side.
Nicole returns moments later with three black cups bearing the company logo. She’s stirring cream into her coffee, avoiding our eyes, when two young men in nearly identical tech uniforms—slim jeans, slimmer shirts, loud socks—pass our table. Nicole covers her face with one hand, but it’s no use. “Missed you at the scrum,” the younger guy says.
Nicole acknowledges him with a nod. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be seen with us.
Kyle takes a red notebook out of his messenger bag and places it on the table. Uncapping his pen, he looks more like an eager college freshman than a police detective.
“I was wondering if you might tell us about that day on the beach,” I begin.
Nicole glances nervously at the notebook, so I slide it off the table into my bag. Her shoulders relax. “All of it?”
“Yes.”
She fidgets with a red string tied around her wrist. “It was a cold, wet morning. I went out to Half Moon Bay to meet someone—”
“Who?”
She pauses, searching for the right words. “A new friend. We parked at the beach.” Nicole’s eyes scan the room. “We ate sandwiches in his car, and then he left. Before heading back into the office, I decided to go for a walk.”
“The day was cold and wet, yet you went for a walk?”
Nicole frowns. “I needed to clear my head. The sandwiches in the car were a bad idea. It didn’t go quite the way I was expecting.”
“Do you often eat sandwiches in the car?” Kyle asks.
Nicole glances at Kyle, annoyed. “It wasn’t my first, but I haven’t had one since.” She turns her focus to me. “I suppose women our age shouldn’t be eating sandwiches in cars.”
“Sometimes one needs a sandwich. Not for me to judge.”
“True.” She almost smiles. “After a few minutes I sat down on a piece of driftwood to take a call from my assistant. There was no one else on the beach.”
Kyle taps his pen on the table. “What did she want, your assistant?”
“He said I needed to get back to the office right away.” Nicole picks at her cuticles, reluctant to say more. I sip my coffee, waiting. Two beats, three. She has green eyes, a few freckles emerging from underneath the makeup. I glimpse the Catholic schoolgirl she once was beneath the trappings of her tech exec exterior.
“My assistant was describing the latest fire I needed to put out when I looked up and saw a shape far down the beach. The figure was moving in an unusual way, slow but jerking, like an injured animal. It was disturbing and mesmerizing at the same time.
“My first thought was that a space alien had landed in the Pacific and drifted ashore. You know, creature from the black lagoon.”
“Your second thought?” I prod.
“‘How am I going to explain this in the office? How do I justify being on the beach in Half Moon Bay at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning?’ I wanted to hurry back to my car, but I couldn’t move. I was hypnotized by this thing moving toward me. Shuffle, two, three, four. I’d never seen anyone or anything move that way, not so much a walk as a strange, gyrating groove. The figure was pitch white, glowing. The voice in my head told me to run.”
“Why didn’t you?” Kyle asks.
“It looked so”—she shakes her head—”so helpless. I stood up and walked toward it. My eyesight isn’t great. Until I was about twenty feet away, it still looked like an amorphous blob.”
I wait for her to look up at me. Her eyes are sunken, her face pale. At first, I thought her look had come from working insane tech hours, staring at the screen, drowning in coffee, forgetting to eat. Now I understand it’s something else. All these months, she has been haunted by her discovery on the beach.
She finally meets my eyes. I lean forward and ask, “When did you realize it was a boy?”
“A sharply written, subtly satirical thriller.”
Publishers Weekly“A gripping blend of danger and sharp social commentary on high-stakes education, the 1%, and suburban tropes.”
Booklist, starred review“She’s a profiler and counter-intelligence specialist, skilled at tradecraft, hand-to-hand combat, firearms, ocean swimming, fluent in French and Russian. She’s a kind of new Wonder Woman.”
Don Noble, Alabama Public Radio
“The overlay of international spycraft on suburban California, whose shiny facade conceals the most heinous of sins and vanities, is surprisingly effective. The plot is sound, the action exciting, and the characters resoundingly human.”
Kirkus Reviews
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“A high-spirited, riveting novel. It combines the relentless, competitive pressure of growing up in affluent Silicon Valley suburbs with a future already coming round the bend.”
Anita Felicelli for San Francisco Chronicle“Fluid, engaging.”
The New York Times“Chilling but heartwarming.”
Wall Street Journal“Fast-paced and smart, thoughtful and full of heart…combines the thrilling twists of a Sue Grafton novel and the literary complexity of the best Tana French.”
Amanda Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters“A sure-footed, darkly funny, semi-satirical thriller that never misses a beat.”
Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review“A two-in-one winner: a gripping thriller set in a Stepford-esque California suburb, and a story of surviving loss and building family bonds.”
Liz French, Library Journal“The Wonder Test deftly explores the underbelly of San Francisco, the pressures of Silicon Valley, and the love between a mother and her teenage son.”
Vendela Vida, author of We Run the Tides“A fast-paced, moving exploration of motherhood and money, danger and deception, privilege and pretense…the perfect thinking person’s page-turner: smart, suspenseful, layered.”
Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Mother May I“The Wonder Test paints a rich, complex picture of the San Francisco Bay Area that both resonates with its natural beauty and captures the darker aspects of being the extremely privileged cyber capital of the world.”
Alice LaPlante, New York Times bestselling author of A Circle of Wives“Richmond has an engaging, fluid writing style that makes even the preposterous seem plausible.”
Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review“Ms. Richmond maintains a creepy sense of dread throughout, even as she explores Rory’s coming-of-age and Lina’s coming-to-terms…chilling but heartwarming.”
Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal“The novel morphs from satirical literary fiction to smooth, intelligent, and fairly violent thriller.”
Don Noble, Alabama Public Radio“The social satire of life and child-raising in Silicon Valley is either entertaining or appalling, depending on the reader…most readers will find, as I did, quite enough here to satisfy.”
Yvonne Klein, Reviewing the Evidence“For various reasons this unusual thriller delighted me in similar ways to Korelitz’s The Plot…I did not see the true wonder of the plot twist coming.”
Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen Booknews“This immersive, slow-burn thriller uncovers a community’s obsession with real estate value when it threatens the lives of a widowed FBI agent and her teenage son.”
Paul Dinh-McCrillis, Shelf AwarenessJoin the newsletter to stay in the loop