Snitch World

A missing smartphone filled with high-tech secrets spells trouble for small-time San Francisco grifter Klinger in Nisbet’s low-key thriller, something of a companion novel to 2012’s Old and Cold, about a homeless San Francisco hit man. All Klinger wants to do is sit in the Hawse Hole bar and drink the days away, swapping stories with fellow patrons. But he’s got the phone, and an aggressive Silicon Valley femme fatale, Marci, wants it. “‘I’ve never had an orgasm,’ she suddenly announced.” To which Klinger replies: “There’s probably an app for that.” The plot is as much about displacement as it is tech spying, as the latest dot-com boom makes the city more and more unaffordable. Klinger, barely able to cover a few days in a flophouse, is a textbook noir protagonist faced with economic and personal doom. Fans of the movies Detour and Barfly will identify. (Oct.)