I have a deadline. But I started to read THE INTRUSIONS, and then it was 3am, and I still have a deadline.

Consider yourself warned.

If you read this book, and even if you don’t, there’s something you want to do: cover the camera lens on your computer. (I have read that Zuckerberg and Gates do this.) Two pieces of black tape will do it, but it’s more sensible to use an inexpensive Webcam Cover that slides open and shut. [To buy it from Amazon, click here.]

And then, if you have a Smart TV, you want to read this and then adjust your settings --- so it will stop tracking you.

Getting the idea? This is one terrifying crime thriller --- “The Silence of the Lambs for the Internet age.” Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher thrillers, praises its “brilliant and organic blend of ancient terror and suspense, with modern issues as its core.” In England, it just won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

Here’s how it starts:

It happens when she leans in to talk to her best friend. It is quick and practised and she doesn’t notice. Fifteen minutes later she starts to feel sick. The room wobbles. She almost falls off her stool. Her friend catches her just in time and wants to know what’s wrong. She tries to answer but discovers she no longer remembers how to use her mouth.

"Every few pages, the plot takes a right-angle turn that you don’t anticipate. More than once, I gasped. Along the way, I learned a lot about technology and social media that makes me want to strip every bit of personal information from my Facebook account."

Anna Becker leaves the bar. She continues to feel strange beyond strange. Passing an alley, she hears a baby crying. Who would leave a baby in an alley? She must do something. She walks into the alley. The baby screams. And then...

Right. She’ll never be seen again. Madison Carter, her best friend and her companion at the bar, goes to the police to report her disappearance. She’s a mess. Ragged, shifting, fidgeting, scratching the skin on her arms. “What did he give me?” she asks detective Geneva Miller. “Why won’t it wear off?” And another question: Why did the man who shoved Anna into the back of his van say, “Don’t feel bad. I’ll be back to claim you.”

Every few pages, the plot takes a right-angle turn that you don’t anticipate. More than once, I gasped. Along the way, I learned a lot about technology and social media that makes me want to strip every bit of personal information from my Facebook account. And Stav Sherez writes like a screenwriter; to read the book is to see the movie. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

No spoilers, but let me suggest the flavor…

Jack Carrigan, Miller’s boss, is too distracted by his own problems to authorize an investigation, but Miller goes to the alley, and…

And then a body is found, posed in a way that suggests…

And the deleted Twitter account…

And the inevitable realization: “We forget that for some people killing is like sex or swimming. It’s fun.”

And then, as we expect, there will be a man. A serial killer, it seems. His choices? That’s for Miller and Carrigan to decode. Difficult, not just because he’s very clever, but because men --- plural --- are a problem for women. They have always watched. But now, thanks to technology, they can…collect. (Have you bought that Webcam Cover yet? If not, this would be a good time.) Who, of the many men it could be, is the killer? Hint: not who you expect. Of course not.

Hitchcock said his method was to give an audience a fear bigger than the fears they live with. That’s an exact description of THE INTRUSIONS.

After you read the book, read this. You’ll see where stories like this come from. And why Sherez says: “All writing springs from loss and makes its way towards completion. In the crime novel, we find the perfect metaphor for the way we read the signs that surround us and make sense of our existence. Writing gives us back the things that life takes away.”