Book Review
Title: The Passengers
Author: John Marrs
Genre: Thriller
Rating: *****
Review: The Passengers has been on my radar for a while as it seemed intriguing and the synopsis really pulled me in. In the opening chapter we are introduced to Claire who is seven months pregnant with Ben’s baby, and by the look of things either Ben has left her or she is his mistress. Claire has always has a mistrust of the driverless cars because she is a bit of a control freak but this morning she has reason to be concerned as her car has been hijacked and all the information she has is a voice telling her in less than two and half hours there is a high chance she will be dead. We then jump to Jude’s perspective, and he is in the same situation as Claire only his car is an older model, he also seems a lot older as his partner in a video mentions retirement and he is greeted with the same creepy voice, if you read this book then I’d definitely recommend the audiobook. The next person we are introduced to is Sofia, who is a nearly 80 year old actress, on her way to a meet and greet at a hospital for cancer patients when her route is hijacked although she believes that she is appearing on a hidden camera show called Celebs Against the Odds. We are then introduced to Sam and Heidi Cole, a married couple due to celebrate their 10th anniversary heading out in separate cars without their children and it seems so far that every single passengers has something to hide. The next person we are introduced to is Shabana, an abused mother of five who is finally fleeing her husband after he is arrested for people trafficking. Shabana is the only person we know of that doesn’t speak English and is also very ignorant of the world outside due to the isolation her arrange marriage caused. Now we have met all the key players and they have now met each other as in each car they can see everyone else who has had their car hijacked.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we are introduced to yet another character, Libby but she isn’t trapped in a car. In fact, she is a chosen member for an inquiry board to determine if accidents where an autonomous car was present is the fault of the AI or human error. Libby is quite complex, she was left by her fiancé for his lover who he subsequently married and had a child with leaving her heartbroken and unable to move on, we also know her actions directly lead to her brother’s suicide in her opinion and she is also hiding something that directly relates to her hatred of driverless cars and modern technology in general as she still uses an old fashioned phone and wristwatch. Libby is in her second day on the inquiry jury and things aren’t going well as she believes the other four members have already made up their minds and they never blame the car due to ramification it would have for their investments and interests when the meeting is interrupted by reports of 4 driverless cars being hacked. However, things get even more interesting as Libby recognises one of the men, although we don’t know who but it is going to be the guy she has been hunting down for the past six months, they met at a nightclub and really hit it off, he is the first guy that makes Libby forget about her ex but she didn’t get his name and she was torn away from him when her friend had an accident that required her to go hospital. Inside the cars, Jude, Clair, Sam, and Heidi all briefly have contact with each other before the mysterious man controlling everything cuts off their audio although they can still see each other. We get a brief chapter from Claire who will protect her unborn baby at all cost but we also get our first interaction from the Hacker as he explains to Jack that everything he does has an equal reaction which prompts him to blow up a 69 year old war veterans car after Jack destroys one of the camera watching them. Jude also happens to be the man Libby met at the bar so she is determined to stay until the very end.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, it turns out that the public along with the inquest jury including Libby are going to be voting on who lives and who dies and while Libby tries to take the moral high ground it isn't possible. The public and most of the jury decide to kill Bilquis, who is a failed asylum seeker while Libby votes to kill Sofia. It turns out the daughter Bilquis wanted to bring to the UK has been dead years and it is her ashes she wants to bring over, and when she fled Somalia she also paid for 15 others to escape which they didn’t know before they cast their votes. Libby voted for Sofia purely because she is the oldest person involved and therefore has the least amount of time left to live. Afterwards, Libby tries to find the Hacker's motivations but he doesn't seem to have any but he knows everything about them. He publicly dumps all Jack's information including his credit card numbers and some very personal information, while he shows the jury exactly why Libby hates the driverless cars. It turns out she witnessed an accident that whipped out 3 generations of the same family and knows the car had time to swerve but choose not to. I must also say I love Cadman who is a social media expert and has been brought in to keep track of everything going on online. However the Hacker mentions that Libby's involvement is critical if Jude is to survive. We also begin to learn more about the Passengers, it turns out Sam is being blackmailed by someone but we don’t know why and Jude seems to be depressed and possibly suicidal. Jude is interesting because it turns out his girlfriend and his brother ran away together leaving him resentful and didn’t have any hope of meeting someone else until he met Libby in the bar.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, the next person to die is Shabana, but it isn't as a result of a vote but purely because members of the public couldn't follow instructions and leave the cars alone, which has now results in an abused mother of 5 dying for no reason at all. The jury are now also voting for who they want to survive the ordeal and they have the chance to interview them. in order to sway the public opinion Libby obviously picks Jude, but I'm not sure how many of them if any are going to make it out alive. The other members of the jury had picked Claire, Shabana and Heidi to survive so the last person standing might not be who I am expecting (right now it’s Jude). Each juror is then given ten minutes to interview one of the remaining 5 passengers, first up is Jack who interviews Claire and she lays it on thick about her husband and child and Jack sympathises with her because his first wife had miscarriages like Claire which skyrockets her in the public ratings. However, after her ten minutes is up the Hacker reveals that her husband’s body has been in the boot of her car the whole time which shocks everyone. I had to read it twice to make sure I read it correctly, this trend continues for the Sofia, Sam, and Heidi. Sofia turns out to be married to a paedophile and has been paying off the families of his victims for years, Sam has another family (another wife and two more children with the same names) and Heidi turns out to be the one blackmailing her husband.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, it is Jude’s turn and unlike the other he actually tells the truth, he tells Libby that this very morning he was planning on killing himself and despite her feelings for Jude, Libby is thrown back to memories of her brother and his suicide and tries to convince him that he can live for her but he wants her to have a partner not a patient. Despite this I have a feeling Jude might the one to survive as he is the only one that has told the truth and doesn’t have any major skeletons hiding in his closet, however, it may be all for nothing if he kills himself afterwards. Things take another shocking turn when Claire suddenly goes into labour, two month early which may change her fate since the jury are voting on the final survivor at that very moment. We also learn from Claire that she didn’t kill her husband, he was diagnosed with an aneurysm very early on in her pregnancy and he told her if it killed him to take him to work as his work life insurance policy is almost three times bigger than their personal policy meaning baby Tate would have a great life and so would Claire. If she said that initially I am almost 100% sure she would have won all the sympathy in the world, literally. Then we get even more backstory from the characters, we learn that Sofia only found out about her husband’s urges, after seeing one of his hands somewhere it had no business being on their niece, Paige. She ignores her suspicions for a while but keeps an eye on her husband until Paige tells her that Patrick has been taking pictures of her. Sofia finds both clothed and unclothed photos of Paige which sickens her but she can’t tell anyone because it puts her career at risk but she sends him to therapy and for a while it seems like he is doing better, so she does consider having a child with him. However, after finding more indecent material she decides she can’t risk the possibility of having a daughter her husband might abuse, so she has a sterilisation in secret. Later on, Patrick “borrows” £30,000 to pay someone to forget his indiscretion and Sofia’s instantly knows he was caught, when she threatens him with telling someone, he threatens her saying he will take her down with him. Caught between a rock and a hard place Sofia keeps her mouth shut but from that moment on they are husband and wife in name only. But the public opinion about Sofia has turned, so much so that a mob attack her car even throwing petrol bombs at her but she survives as the fire service help out without interfering with the car, but she gets no votes from the jury and the public aren’t going to save her.
We switch to Sam and Heidi, it turns out Sam was happily in a relationship with Heidi and married her before he found out she wasn’t his genetic match, like Claire and Ben, so he decides to meet the woman who is without no other intentions. However, the second he meets Josie, he is in love, but this puts him in an awkward position since he is already married. He doesn’t want a divorce since he and Heidi both come from broken homes and knows what it can do to the children involved but he can’t live without Josie, so he decides to keep them both and works insane hours in order to keep two families together. While I do not condone his actions apart from Jude, Sam has done the least wrong. Heidi, on the other hand, abused her power as a police officer to terrorise and torment the man she claimed to love to the point where she basically bankrupts his business. However, she might not want to follow through on the blackmail after meeting Josie, Heidi doesn’t tell her she is Sam’s other wife but learns that Josie has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is caring from her mother who has dementia and Heidi sympathises with her as we do. We are also aware of the fact that if Sam dies he is leaving behind four children to Heidi’s two as we know Heidi wouldn’t look after Josie and her children. Heidi gains two votes from the jury while Sam gains one, meaning that Libby’s vote for Jude doesn’t seem to do anything until Cadman reveals the public opinion. Going on the save hashtags, Heidi is clearly in the lead but taking into account all the other independent hashtags, Jude is in the lead but double the amount of votes Heidi has meaning he might be the sole survivor, but I have a feeling there is another twist coming.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, I was right about the second twist, but in truth, there was a bunch of them. As the final minutes tick down until the collision, there are two votes for Heidi and two for Jude, one for Sam meaning that someone has to change their vote and the only one willing to do that is Jack. Even after forcing Libby to beg for Jude’s life, Jack offers his support for Heidi but they suddenly become aware of the fact that Claire is in labour and everyone bar Jack votes for her, so she and her baby can survive. With the cars now less than two miles away from colliding, they are all hoping beyond hope that the Hacker will keep his word but not before one more reveal. He tells them that the designs the cars make in accidents are false, that they have been lied to. It turns out that the cars kill the person/people least valuable to society in the eyes of the Government and Jack was one of the key figures implementing this process. It means that the inquest was a sham all along and that people have needlessly died when accidents could have been avoided. Despite their rage, the other jurors cast out Jack and present and united front as all the cars are set to collide, even Claire’s. However, before they can they stop and the bomb squad manages to recover the Passengers, Heidi and Sam are shaken but okay and Claire is rushed off in an ambulance, Sofia has committed suicide and died but when they get to Jude’s car it is empty. Before anyone has time to process what this means, driverless cars begin randomly crashing into each over killing over 1000 people and injured nearly 4000 more which was the Hacker’s plan all along.
We then jump forward six months, where Claire and baby Tate are adjusting to their new life and Claire has a media career meaning she can now support her son. Sam has pleaded himself to Josie and all four of his children and is rebuilding his life, although he does have a conversation with Heidi as she is awaiting sentencing for her crimes in abusing her power as a police officer but her relationship with Sam is done and he seems happy while she is considering her next move. Sofia’s death was ruled as a suicide and her husband is on trial for his crimes, however, Jude has vanished into thin air. Libby has tried to move on working with a group campaigning for transparency from the Government and has drinks with her friend, Nia after a television appearance. After having drink and returning home, Libby finds a tablet in her bag with a single video message on it and it is from Jude. He tells Libby that what happened that day wasn’t as black and white as it is being made out and he wants to tell her the truth in person and she realises he must have been the man who bumped into her on the train. She is torn about going to meet him or calling the police but since she hasn’t resolved her feelings for Jude, I know she is going to meet him and we will find out the part he played in the hijacking and why once and for all.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, Libby goes to meet Jude, only to learn the truth of his identity and the reasons behind the hacking. It turned out that this man isn’t anywhere near what Libby was led to believe and everything between them was engineered including their meeting and months before that. This revelation was astounding but what happened next was even better. We then jump forward two years, where we meet Libby again on her wedding day to one of her fellow jurors, Doctor Matthew Nelson and she is heavily pregnant with their first child but she has finally found he well deserved happy ending. However, on their way to get married, they learn of Jack’s acquittal from his trial and can’t believe he got away with it but that isn’t the end. We learn that Jack’s was part of a profit group in the Government but he finally gets what’s coming to him as the so called “Hacking Collective” take over his car and possibly the cars of other corrupts officials as the process begins again but this time Libby and Matthew aren’t going to be involved with it. Overall, the Passenger was a rollercoaster ride of emotions that constantly kept me on the edge of my seat and I can’t wait to see what more John Marrs has to offer me. If it is anything close to the Passengers then he is going to be an insta-buy author for me. I recommend this to everyone looking for a seat of your pants thriller that will keep you gripped until the very last page.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Comentários