Dead Money

August 1, 2024

This debut from tech industry insider Kerr finds Mackenzie Clyde, a Silicon Valley lawyer and fixer, investigating the murder of a tech startup CEO. Mackenzie's boss, a powerful venture capitalist, was the chief investor in the startup and stands to lose a fortune. He turns to Mackenzie to solve the problem, but there are even bigger secrets and larger stakes involved. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2024
Kerr, a lawyer and early employee of Airbnb, debuts with a novel set in the world of San Francisco tech start-ups. Mackenzie Clyde is an investigator for the venture-capital firm of Hammersmith Venture, but her life is upended by the murder of Trevor Canon. Hammersmith VC has invested loads of money into Trevor's company, Journy, which provides easy transportation for the city. It's clear that Trevor was murdered, so Mackenzie's boss, Roger, sets her on the mission. Hammersmith has also involved the FBI, and Mackenzie reluctantly pairs up with Danner, the agent assigned to the case. As they unravel the knot of Trevor's secrets--including the dead-money clause in his will that has frozen his assets--flashbacks take the reader through Mackenzie's past. She is a confident rebel, and these vignettes show just how far she'll go to get what she wants. Kerr's writing in the main story is fast paced and straightforward; it's in the flashbacks where the story shines, giving the reader insight into Mackenzie's character.

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Starred review from December 2, 2024
Kerr puts his background as a lawyer and tech executive to good use in his impressively unpredictable debut. Mackenzie Clyde, an attorney from humble beginnings, now works as an investigator for Hammersmith, one of San Francisco’s hottest venture capital firms. When Trevor Canon, head of tech startup Journy, is discovered dead in his office and the SFPD fail to make headway on the case, the founder of Hammersmith—whose firm made a $5 billion investment in Journy—uses his influence to bring in the FBI. Mackenzie joins FBI agent Jameson Danner, the son of a U.S. senator, in leading the investigation, and the pair soon discovers that, before Trevor’s death, he inserted a clause into his will freezing his assets (including Hammersmith’s investment) until his murderer is caught. It gradually becomes clear that only a Journy executive would have had the access necessary to kill Trevor, but each one has an airtight alibi—except for the chief technology officer, who’s just disappeared. After setting the stage for a standard, albeit glitzy, murder mystery, Kerr takes the narrative on a series of hairpin turns before arriving at a jaw-dropping finale. This marks the arrival of a formidable new talent. Agent: Liz Parker, Verve Literary.

Starred review from December 15, 2024
Tech insider Kerr's twisty, propulsive debut explores Silicon Valley's dark side through the eyes of a wily outsider heroine. A few weeks after Trevor Canon, the founder and CEO of one of tech's hottest startups, Journy (think Uber or Lyft), was shot to death in his San Francisco office, Mackenzie Clyde, a lawyer-turned-investigator for venture capitalist Roger Hammersmith, is ordered by her boss to join the FBI probe as an adviser. At stake is the $5 billion that Roger's firm had invested in Journy, now frozen because of a "dead money" provision that Trevor added to his will shortly before his killing. His assets can only be released when someone is tried for his murder. Teaming up with FBI agent Jameson Danner and Journy's liaison to the investigation, COO Eleanor Eden (whose high-flying career resembles Sheryl Sandberg's), Mackenzie embarks on a suspenseful hunt for an elusive killer that ends in an explosive climax at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Alternating chapters reveal key events from Mackenzie's past that have shaped her life. This surprising nesting doll of a thriller, in which no one is who they appear to be, layers one story inside another within another. Despite his sometimes-clunky writing (the characters "smirk" at least 24 times), Kerr has created one of the most memorable female thriller protagonists in recent years. Striking not only because of her unusually tall height, the independent Mackenzie is determined to control her destiny in a male-dominated industry. A sharply observed portrait of the tech world and the role ambitious women play in it.

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