In regular intelligence gathering, when you listen in on someone’s phone call or read their telegram, it’s called an ‘intercept.’

I loved the concept of this book – designed around sensory deprivation research much like Dean Koontz’s The Door to December, the book centers around a secret military facility’s supervisor’s final few days – in which he loses control of his charges and in the process loses someone dear to himself and eventually, his life.

The concept is simple: military kidnaps or somehow other “obtains” humans which have been subjected to extreme sensory deprivation (no touch, sight, feeling, hearing etc for years). When they lose their minds, when presented with stimuli (images, sounds, etc) of a “destination” person, they can tune in to that person anywhere on the globe and describe what they’re doing at that exact point in time, what they are eating, what they are hearing or seeing. It’s telekinesis and remote viewing in one go.

Joe is the manager of such a facility. He oversees the stimulation (read torture) of the intercepts, which he had named after known characters to humanize them. Antenna 201 is called “Bishop”. What he doesn’t know is that “Bishop” has become focused in a very long time, and the focus is on him. “Bishop” knows everything about his affair with an intern, his nasty divorce, his wife taking his daughter and moving away. “Bishop” is also extremely angry – ready to do anything to escape to constant mental torture.

And Joe, well, he’s going to have a few brutal days ahead of him, which we will witness from afar. His ex wife will commit suicide. His daughter is seeing things. His dog ran away. And he starts having hallucinations of people and voices. All during an internal audit from headquarters regarding the demise of one of his staff by the hands of “Bishop”.

I think at its core, the book is more than a very well written horror novel. It’s a story about Government abuse, loss of control and autonomy and grief.

We think we can deal. But grief is this fucking monsoon. And it just doesn’t stop. And it fills our reservoir. And fills it. And fills it. Then all those dams and dykes and levees and locks or whatever, all those things we’ve built to keep our reservoirs from overflowing… they burst. And when one of them bursts, they all burst. Like dominoes. And it can be debilitating. But it’s okay. It’s normal.”

I have thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t wait to read more!