Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Dead Money: A Novel by Jakob Kerr

  

Jakob Kerr’s impressive debut Dead Money (Bantam, 2025) received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Washington Post, Amazon Editors, and CrimeReads named it one of their Best Books of the Year. And the New York Times called it one of the best thrillers of 2025. My name finally came to the top of the hold list at the library and I had the opportunity to see what generated all of these accolades.

In the first place, Kerr has created an impressively accurate depiction of the Silicon Valley tech world and the people who work in it. The mountain-sized egos, the juvenile mindset, the relentless pursuit of the next technology break-through, the meaningless jargon, and the insatiable drive for more money, it’s all there.

Then, Kerr’s protagonist Mackenzie Clyde is a likeable, hard-working woman who had to start from the ground up in her career. A law school graduate, she doesn’t practice law at Hammersmith Venture Capital, she solves problems when they arise at the companies where her boss Roger Hammersmith has invested. Her role places her outside but adjacent to the tech world, giving her a clear perspective on it and its denizens. She’s had to learn to deal with their immaturity and self-centeredness to do her job and she’s become quite proficient.

The narrative seems to be a straight-forward story about the murder of Trevor Canon, the CEO of Journy, another start-up that’s become a household name overnight, one that is poised to yield millions when it goes public. In addition to the shock of his murder, Canon’s will had a surprising clause that said in the event of Canon’s murder, all of his assets were to be frozen until his murderer was convicted. At first everyone is asking why he thought he might be killed, then the large issue became the locked-down money. Because Canon was the chief shareholder, this asset suspension meant the company was in limbo until the criminal justice process was complete, hence the term “dead money.”

The San Francisco Police had been unable to identify the killer. Canon’s shares were left to the executive managers of Journy, which would make each of them instant multi-millionaires, so they all had motives, making them obvious suspects, but they all had alibis too. The FBI stepped in after SFPD floundered and Roger Hammersmith pulled strings to have Mackenzie added to the investigative team to explain the tech world to the agents. In reality, he wanted to know what was going on.

And here is where the straight-forward part ends. Kerr incorporates more unexpected turns and hairpin curves than a mountain road into the story, with one surprise after another, resulting in a startling but satisfying resolution. Highly recommended.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Bantam

·         Publication date: ‎January 28, 2025

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎416 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎0593726707

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-0593726709

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4aaN9Fr

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.