The Minders by John Marrs

Kaceey’s Review:

John Marrs pulled it off again. A fabulous out–of-the-box thriller certain to leave you speechless.

Five random people…chosen by the government to become minders. Surely you ask… what is a minder? They are individuals willing to have an implant placed in their brains. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? After all, this innocent little implant merely contains all the British documents and secrets the government doesn’t want anyone to get a hold of. Computers and clouds are no longer safe.
Out in cyber-land, there is a group blackmailing countries all over the world for this most valuable information. Britain feels confident they can stay one step ahead by hiding their information is this most unusual fashion until a better and safer solution can be found.

Wow! What a premise…right?! Had my full attention immediately!

Told from the perspectives of all the minders along with one unknown, you’re quickly dropped directly into their now desperate lives and their overwhelming challenges to keep safe.

John Marrs builds on his previous books, The One and The Passengers, in this latest release. While clearly able to stand alone, I highly recommend starting with those previous reads before you open the pages of this latest. I truly think this will give you the most gratifying reading experience.

I must say The One remains my favorite to date (Of course, romance always rules the day.) But this was equally entertaining and a must read for John Marrs’ fans.

A buddy read with Susanne
Thank you to Elisha at Berkley Publishing via NetGalley

Susanne’s Review:

Terrifying. In More Ways than One.

Hacking. Everyone knows that computers can be hacked. After all, it happens every day, right?

The British Government, however, has decided to ensure that their top-secret information stays that way, and to do so, they’ve figured out a way to store their data, deep in the minds of 5, extremely brilliant, people who are, therefore, unhackable.

These individuals are known as “The Minders” and now that they’ve had top-secret information implanted inside of their brains, they have to leave their old lives behind and start fresh.

Except for their handler, no one knows who they are, thus they cannot be found, or so they think.

Pulse-pounding, gripping and terrifying, “The Minders” is a brilliant mystery/suspense by John Marrs, who continues to push the envelope by coming up with fresh new ideas. This novel incorporates certain plot points from two of his prior novels (“The One” and “The Passengers”), thus I highly suggest reading those before diving into this one.

While “The Minders” gave me a lot to ponder as someone who works in the Legal/Tech industry and specifically with “electronic discovery” – I was troubled by the fact that the amount of electronic data implanted into an individual’s brain was never mentioned. I couldn’t help but wonder whether gigabytes, terabytes, or pedabytes were implanted. (For instance: 1 gigabyte = one truck full of paper; 1 terabyte = paper from 50,000 trees; and 1 pedabyte, = 250 billion pages of text, and so on) so while I enjoyed this book, the only real issue I had is that it didn’t include a few “key details” that the geek in me so desperately needed.

That being said, this is a solid, character-driven suspense with a fabulous ending. Let me just say that I can’t wait to see what John Marrs comes out with next!

A buddy read with Ms. Kaceey!

A huge thank you to Elisha at Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for the arc.

Published on NetGalley and Goodreads