November 1, 2024
Kaufman, who once worked in data networking, debuts with the story of 26-year-old Ruth, a microchip expert who also robs banks, stealing millions using a hacked firewall chip she designed. When she is discovered, she hits the road with a reluctant dog and with plenty of agents in pursuit. Ruth plans to stay a step ahead. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2024 Library Journal
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Starred review from February 1, 2025
Ruth is used to packing up quickly and not looking back. As a cybercriminal specializing in bank fraud, she has to be. Ruth is a brilliant and morally ambiguous hacker and usually works alone. But her last heist included some assistance from a seemingly trustworthy accomplice whom Ruth discovers has been siphoning money from a shared account. As federal agents get closer to uncovering the very lucrative and very illegal digital web Ruth's been weaving, she has to, like so many times before, move quickly and leave any loyalties behind. Kaufman immediately sets readers into Ruth's high-stakes world as a modern outlaw. Ruth chooses to move along the fringes of society, building massive amounts of wealth while staying undercover. Skillfully mixing intrigue, technology, and sharp psychological insight, Ruth Run is a nuanced portrayal of a brash antihero and the federal agent who's had his eye on her for years. Readers who loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will enjoy the tech-savvy protagonists, madcap circumstances, and ethical dilemmas in this fresh addition to the genre, a debut thriller in which every character's motives and methods are equally up for debate.
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March 1, 2025
Readers are asked to root for an unrepentant thief in this first novel, a jokey cybercrime thriller. Ruth, a hacker of microchips, would say that she isn't theworst kind of thief: "I skimmed chump change from banks. Are you really going to side with a bank?" Mike, formerly a salesman who worked with Ruth and now a clock puncher for what he calls "the Agency," has spent seven years on Ruth's trail. At some point during the car chase that brings Ruth and her nearly 3 pounds of stolen cash from Northern California to Nevada and beyond, she learns that she's being framed in the double murder of her coding assistant and his boyfriend. Ruth and Mike's cat-and-mouse act has an odd, couplelike tetchiness: Ruth considers Mike "a self-important jerk" and "a government flunky"; Mike sees Ruth as "an almost pathologically nonconformist spirit" who "dressed badly" and who, for all the good trying to elude him will do her, "might as well have tried to hide from the sky." Cat and mouse take turns narrating this cunning and constantly surprising novel, giving readers a passenger-seat view from which to witness each adversary's missteps and monitor their weaknesses. (Ruth's kryptonite: food and the dog she picks up on the road. Mike's kryptonite: Ruth.) Luddite readers will miss some of the novel's finer points, but underneath all its talk of microchips, databases, and firewalls is a character-fueled story in which a bit of heart occasionally seeps out from between the cracks in Ruth's armor, or at least tries to: "I reminded myself that life was about more than money; what money could buy also mattered." No tech expertise required to enjoy this diverting and funny-as-hell cyber caper.
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