Big Time

by Ben H. Winters

Ben Winters, whom critics attest  "you'll follow...anywhere" ( New York Times Book Review ), returns with a speculative, corporate espionage thriller that takes the adage "Time is money," and makes it literally, frighteningly so.

Grace
The best part of Grace’s job at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health is that she can clock out at five. She’s got things to do--like care for her aging, cantankerous mother, her angsty and remarkably bright teenager--with little time for herself to spare. Which is why Grace is peeved when in the late evening, she's called into work. A woman has appeared at a local hospital, injured, shaken, and with an unusual portacath implanted in her chest. The hospital cannot recognize the model. As Grace investigates, the scant info on the device's provenance appears apocryphal. What's been done to this girl? And who is behind it? 
 
Ana
When she comes to, she realizes she’s been taken. She’s in the back seat of a black woozy, scared. She’d been asleep, and then she’d been awake, a woman with a catalog face, dressed in tailored pants and a crisp white blouse had dragged her out of her tent beneath the overpass and stabbed her in the neck. The same woman who was now in the front seat. Somehow, Ana escapes. When she arrives at a hospital in Hanover, Maryland, she’s found with an usual device attached to her body. Ana is confused, and as she tries to grasp for any memory or scrap of the past, she comes up empty. She can't remember anything.
 
Desiree
Desiree is on fire with pain, the pulp of her right eye a bloody mess. She can’t believe the girl had blinded her, can't believe that she’d escaped. Tending to the it had set her back. And now the client is not happy. What she needs is to fulfill the mission. Desiree has a job to do, and she is almost out of time. . .

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Audiobook, Time Travel, Mystery Thriller

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 9, 2024

About the author

Ben H. Winters is the author most recently of the novel The Quiet Boy (Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2021). He is also the author of the novel Golden State; the New York Times bestselling Underground Airlines; The Last Policeman and its two sequels; the horror novel Bedbugs; and several works for young readers. His first novel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Philip K. Dick award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire.

Ben also writes for film and television. He is the creator and co-showrunner of Tracker, forthcoming on CBS. Previously he was a producer on the FX show Legion, and on the upcoming Apple TV+ drama Manhunt.

He has contributed short stories to many anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Lightspeed. He is the author of four “Audible Originals”– Stranger, Inside Jobs, Q&A, and Self Help — and several plays and musicals. His reviews appear frequently in the New York Times Book Review. Ben was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Maryland, educated in St. Louis, and then grew up a bunch more, in various ways, in places like Chicago, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Indianapolis, IN. These days he lives in LA with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.

Reviews

[Left Coast Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book at about 3pm yesterday, and by 11:30pm had read it all the way through. Ben H. Winters knows how to tell a story.

This story doesn't exist on the same plane as the truly wonderful Last Policeman trilogy; I could be completely off base on this, but I feel like the publishing industry has found a truly talented writer and then forced him to pump out and release books before he was quite ready. The execution of this thriller was pretty close to perfect, but I feel an unfettered Winters would have come up with some much more interesting ideas to play around with. This one felt more like a movie script.

This book follows the ubiquitous pandering trend of making all the action heroes female ("Look! I can kick ass and jump out of moving vehicles with minimal injury and absorb gunshots and make brand new little people!"). It didn't really bother me much, though, because these unlikely creatures were fully fleshed out and interesting. Reading a good thriller like this one makes me wonder what the magic is that makes a few of these books so absorbing while the majority are flat and dull.

Some ingredients for success:
--Main characters, like the reader, feel lost and confused at the beginning
--Main characters live recognizable lives with relatable problems, instead of hanging out in a batcave or spaceship or something
--No Insta-Love or indeed any romance at all. (This can work in a thriller but is extraordinarily unlikely to serve as anything but a distraction, unless your name is John Le Carre.)
--Slow reveal drip-fed to the reader. Really, pacing is everything in a book like this.

Anyway, if you have a few hours to kill, this is a great way to drop out of the world for a while. But Winters has written much, much better.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winters' last novel, The Quiet Boy, was truly fantastic, but it was also a very long and often slow burn and I think I may have been the only person who really loved it (or read it). This time around Winters is running at full speed, almost always sprinting, with a book you can tear through and be satisfied by. It's his most appealing book for a general audience yet, and it has time travel to boot. Sometimes Winters can be more than a little depressing or cerebral, but this one is really just fun. Maybe it will really catch on and then everyone will discover his Last Policeman series, one of the best crime series around that is also the most bleak ever. There's a reason I like him so much.

This is a straight up thriller with multiple points of view, quick chapters, and constant action. It starts more disjointed but eventually it all comes together. Structurally it is smooth as silk, beautifully done. The book follows Allie, who has just been kidnapped; Desiree who did the kidnapping; and Grace, who at first seems totally removed from all this as a single mom caring for her aging mother, parenting her nonbinary teen, and doing it all on top of her super boring job at the FDA. Eventually Grace gets roped in and she's a great everywoman proxy for the audience, it's particularly fun to watch Winters make this very dull work into a pivotal plot point. Grace is a classic thriller protagonist who sees trouble and steps in to try and stop it even though she is in no way equipped to do so.

It also has a joke title that isn't totally clear at first, which also gets extra points from me.

A great airplane book, a funky little page turner, one I feel comfortable recommending to pretty much anyone.

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 2 out of 5]

And that's all I have to say about it.

[Rachel the Page-Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! This is one interesting book. I requested the ARC because it sounded a bit like the movie “In Time”. It’s completely different in plot, but both take a look at the idea of time being a currency of sorts. When rich people develop the power to harness something, what will happen to the poor?

This story starts with Allie handcuffed in the back of an SUV. She’s been kidnapped by a woman calling herself Desiree, but she has no idea why - she’s a boring middle school teacher who was at the park with her baby, Rachel, when she was taken. After an accident with the vehicle, Allie is able to escape and ends up in the hospital, where they see she has a very strange portacath implanted in her chest.

Grace works for a division of the FDA that deals with medical implants and devices. She’s called upon to try to find out what this strange device is, which leads her to discovering papers about a seemingly defunct company that wanted to extract time - calling it a “durational element”. This itself leads to her and her non-binary child, River, to do some research. Maybe it’s research they shouldn’t have done. Maybe it was the right thing, even if they put themselves in danger? You can be the judge as this story plays out…

“A Wrinkle In Time” was my favorite book as a child, because I love thinking about time being non-linear. I love how this book used that same thought to produce an action-packed, suspenseful science-fiction story. This dragged in a couple of parts, and I would have liked more backstory and character development, but those are my small complaints. This book was crazy in the best sense of the word, and the ending was fantastic. 4.5 stars.

(Thank you to Mulholland Books, Ben H. Winters and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on March 5, 2024.)

[Robert Felton · Rating 2 out of 5]

It opens brilliantly with a kidnapping of a schoolteacher by a curiously photogenic, green-eyed assassin. Fast-paced and thoroughly captivating, I was buckled up for a real barn burner. Then, the book smashes into a bottleneck of confusing motives, narrative incoherence, and an influx of extraneous characters (like Kendall Johns, was he really necessary in the story?), resulting in a novel that kills the momentum it created. The book's ending with a boring Congressional hearing was, unfortunately, quite fitting.

[Hiba · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fast paced and fun read but it did disappoint me in the end as it didn’t explore the main sci fi aspect very thoroughly.

I was hooked by the first chapter and excited to find out what’s really going as there is a big element of mystery about why Allie has been kidnapped and then later also how the 3 main characters are connected. However, about 3/4 of the way in the mystery is kind of figured out and it’s not as exciting nor flushed out as I expected.

A few things I was looking for:

What was Allie’s memories up to 16 if she didn’t know she was Ana?

Where was Allie when she was gone and where did she appear when she came back?

How did Allie “wake up”? And what about her child and husband or were they just not real at all? Why did she think they were and was she just at the park alone?

What was that whole bit about Desiree being someone else deep down for? That didn’t really result in anything. Why was anything even told from her POV if she was only a character for the sake of plot progression?

Also the fact that the universe changed a few peoples minds about what happened felt like a very loose cover up to another plot hole.

While this was a fun read, it was mostly fun because I thought I’d get answers to all those questions by the end and was anticipating that big reveal.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is just absolutely pure fun, with no slow parts at all. It's what I wish all thrillers would be: taut, lean, and running with its proverbial hair on fire.

Winters' writing skills have been honed to a fine point. With eight other books under his belt, he is coming into his prime. I've seen the same trajectory with authors like Silvia Moreno-Garcia and N. K. Jemisin: they started out really good, and steadily emerged into something greater. It's so satisfying to witness.

The author has tackled many genres, from post-apocalyptic/police procedural, to speculative fiction based on alt-history, to courtroom family drama, to the dangers of greed and gentrification. The thing I have noticed again and again in Winters' books, is that he takes such tender care with his characters. It's such an endearing way to balance out the hair-raising events in which the poor souls find themselves. The author believes that redemption is possible, even for the deeply flawed, and he persuades the reader to believe it, too. But, he reminds us that atonement isn't something directly in our path; we have to turn toward it in order to receive it.

We think of Big Time as famous, heralded, or powerful. What we don't tend to think of is time itself, which is a much more salient and slippery subject. We tend not to think of time as a commodity, but then the adage "time is money" comes to mind. We've been monetizing time for centuries. If there is any way to further bank time, someone will discover it.

The story begins with a startling sequence of events, and that's just the prologue. This first section is quick and efficient at setting the scene. The next three sections comprise three days: Wednesday, Thursday, and a very long Friday, which is followed by an epilogue, six months down the road. Now that we know the novel's essential structure, it should come as no surprise that we begin the next section from the periphery, with an additional central character, and work our way back towards the original subject. It reminds me of how smart investigative TV shows do the same thing. The shifts in perspective set the urgency of narrative tone.

Throughout, the characters consider the nature of time, through individual and shared experience, and in a scientific sense. There are two generally different ways of experiencing time: "life comes at you fast" or "is this all there is?" And we have just been introduced to both types. A persistent nagging feeling suggests to us that there may be a third way. We always hear from smart people that "time is a construct." But if we can construct it, shouldn't that mean that we can capture it? I'm envisioning a cosmic 3D printer, only a more elegant version.

I have to say that I liked Allie from the start. I love the way her mind works, the way she fills in the blanks with endless possibilities, when she doesn't have the answers. A math teacher obsessed with variables is obviously in touch with her right brain as well as her left, and it makes her immensely likeable, and relatable.

Right now, Allie is up against the clock. So is everyone else in the story, each in their own way.

Grace, the other central character in the book is also generally relatable in her frazzled "never enough time or enough coffee" state and also specifically resonant in the way even very intelligent people have to wrestle with the concepts and ideas presented by physics. I like that the author presents Grace to us like a mirror.

What do people want to do most with time? The goal to manipulate time is inextricably linked to the desire to manipulate mortality. That's the creepy core of this thriller. I got that exact same feeling in Blade Runner, when the replicants realized that their memories were not their own. It's a feeling like falling, except inside your own head.

It's unusual for me, to get completely hooked by a scifi/tech thriller, but this story of ordinary people finding themselves in surreal and extraordinary adrenaline-inducing situations, really captured my entire attention.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Mullholland Books/Little, Brown and Company of the Hachette Book Group, for providing an advance reader's copy of this novel.

[Nadine in California · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. I feel like I can always rely on Ben H. Winters to show me at least a good time, and sometimes a great time, as with Underground Airlines and Golden State. This time around (I know I'm beating the word to death, I'm not trying to be punny, I'm just tired, it's late) I had a solid good time with the audio version - great story, fun twists, entertaining characters, a perfect companion for dog walks. Because frankly, the dogs aren't the greatest companions on leash - the old one has to sniff EVERYTHING, the middle one is fine unless a cat shows up, and the puppy is too young to be fully vaccinated and has to be carried in a sling. Thank god it's just a supplement to the off-leash dog park.

[Sharon L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars. A disappointing thriller with a time travel element that never really takes off. My feelings about this book are likely diminished by reading it so close in time to the far superior time-travel novel THE OTHER VALLEY (by Scott Alexander Howard).

BIG TIME suffers from wooden characters, a comically bad “baddie,” and a time travel twist that doesn’t go anywhere. To be fair, a reviewer I greatly respect enjoyed this book, and if you’re interested, I suggest checking out the many positive reviews.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast-paced sci-fi thriller with a unique premise in which a scientist has learned how to extract units of time from individuals and give them to other people. Told from alternating POVs from a woman who is kidnapped and turns out to be the victim of these time experiments to the woman hired to transport her to the single mother researcher determined to get to the bottom of the identity of the mysterious kidnapped woman. I really enjoyed this highly original, thought-provoking read that was also good on audio. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more by new to me author Ben H. Winters!

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am giving this one 3.5 stars. This one had an interesting premise, but it wasn’t as successful as his previous books, for me.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Big Time" is a bit like a Blake Crouch novel: focused on a new technology with characters on the run. It centers on three characters: a woman running (Allie), the woman doing the chasing (Desiree), and a FDA employee (Grace) closing in on the nefarious conditions upon which the new technology was created. The pace is good: there's no lingering on irrelevant details or complicated scientific principles. However, I found the world building to be almost too minimal and the characters a bit cartoonish. There are some valiant efforts at humor but they also confused me as a reader: is this a thriller? A comedy? I couldn't quite figure out the tone, and the ending was underwhelming at best.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

[Amy Alyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this down. It’s a metaphysical thriller that has an air of dystopian social commentary imbedded into it. Maybe it’s just my niche, but I LOVE this kinda novel.

[Mily Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s something about speculative fiction that keeps me wishing for an ending where heroes do not triumph and for a few pages I was afraid Big Time was going to deliver the exact opposite: an ending where miraculously the heroines defeated ‘the man’. But no, the epilogue did not let me down, and I think the way we got that final dark twist to the story via Kathy’s POV was just brilliant.

[Ira Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ben H. Winters’ novels have been on my to read list ever since I finished his superlative Last Policeman trilogy. So when presented with the chance to read his new novel Big Time, I jumped at the opportunity. And I’m really glad I did.

From the opening scene in which Allie, for unclear reasons, has been kidnapped by Desiree, I was immediately hooked. A very readable and fast paced sci-fi thriller, I was riveted and finished the book in nearly one sitting. Filled with well developed and relatable characters, excellent plotting and pacing, and a total lack of coincidences in the plot that make the reader groan, Big Time was a completely enjoyable read.

Highly recommended.

My thanks to Mulholland Books and Netgalley for providing an ARC of the book.

[Phonejock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Mr.Winters Last Detective series. I read it years ago and I think of it often. Big Time did not really work for me. I found the premise thin and the character development just ok. I thought there were a couple of plot holes/ ideas that really were not resolved. If they had been ( or more thoroughly explored) it may have improved the book. Don’t mean to be coy, but I do not want to give the “big reveal” away.

[Jeanette]

DNF - This is an author I have enjoyed. Not this novel.

Truly, I found the opening sequences appalling. Vicious and gross combined. Not for me. I can take some grim and lethal components but this is furiously dark. No rating, too evil chewy.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such a disappointing book, especially after the good books Winters has written. A bit of science fiction, a bit of an adventure story. The plot is predictable. The characters are wooden. The only bit with value is the sci-fi invention in the midst of the plot.

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those cases where 3 stars is a perfectly good rating. This was a fast, fun read and while I have some lingering questions about the science of it all, Winters assembled an interesting cast of characters, and wove three storylines together skillfully toward a climax where they all meet. And the final scene / epilogue is a kicker. Dark in the "this is too real" type family!

This book is an action sci-fi where the "hero" is a middle-aged FDA worker, Grace, who kinda just wants to take care of her aged mom and teenage kid and watch TV but stumbles onto a something weird about a medical device that she can't seem to not investigate. There's a sociopathic baddie who goes by Desiree, who is a "contractor" obsessed with her time, and Allie, the young woman who has the malfunctioning medical device in her body and two timeline realities in her head.

I appreciated that each of these characters has some relationship to time, even if Grace's is the "normal" one of the small irritations of getting older. Her delightfully bratty nonbinary kid River is an absolute gem, and their relationship is a really realistic and sweet one. I think the book is a bit hand-wavy about how the central concept of stealing time works, so probably you should avoid this book if you want a really thoughtful explanation of that element. But otherwise it's a quick, thriller-lite read - kind of reminds me of the movie FARGO.

I haven't read THE LAST POLICEMAN series for which Winters is famous, but it's on my list. This was a nice dip into his style, and made me look forward to that series whenever I get around to it.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️ this was such a fun and exciting sci-fi thriller. Really enjoyed all the twists and turns and ways it made me think.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

For readers who enjoy Blake Crouch.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This explosive sci fi-tech-thriller hit the ground running and didn't let up for a page, keeping me hooked the entire time. The book follows Allie, a woman who has been kidnapped for apparently no reason, and Grace, a woman who works for an obscure branch of the FDA. When Allie escapes her kidnapper, she ends up in a hospital with memory loss, where she and the medical staff realize she has an unusual medical device implanted in her chest. This is where her story intersects with Grace, who is tasked with identifying the device in hopes of helping staff identify their injured patient whose amnesia seems to be getting worse by the minute. Revealing any more would give too much away, but suffice to say that Allie is in danger and Grace is determined to help her.

This was gripping from start to finish. The stakes start out high and only get higher as the book goes along. The pacing is excellent--lightning fast and pulling you through the book with the same sense of urgency and danger felt by all the characters. Several different points of view are introduced throughout the book and that is an effective way to slowly dole out information to the reader as you start to understand more about what's really going on. The ending, although not what I would call satisfying necessarily, felt realistic to the situation at hand in the world the author has created. I would highly recommend this title and will definitely be checking out the author's previous works as well.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Tomislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

The latest novel of Ben Winters (author of Underground Airlines, The Last Policeman, etc.) is a quick read, and primarily a thriller, built around one major speculative fiction concept. I’m not going to explain that concept here, because the mystery of its nature is a major part of the suspense of the novel. Of course, as a thriller, the well-being and life of the principal characters is also at risk and driving the suspense.

The main character is well fleshed out, and was easy for me to identify with. Grace Berney is a middle-aged and mid-level bureaucrat in the US Food and Drug Administration. She once held high ambitions for herself, but life has eased her into an unexciting grind of handling 510(k) applications for new medical devices, caring for her elderly mother who repeatedly fails to recognize the loss of her capabilities, and for her emo teenaged semi-nonbinary daughter. Without getting too auto-biographical here, I will share that all three of those relate to my own experiences. Into her professional life comes an oddball information request from the rail police regarding the implantation of an unrecognized medical device in the body of found young woman suffering from intellectual and physical trauma – who cannot even give her own name.

The mystery involves a hired assassin, a medical researcher who has discovered a powerful aspect of physics and biological time, a conspiracy to monetize that, and two competing personalities in the young woman mentioned earlier. The interconnected personal suspense and mystery of the speculative science drove me right to the end of the novel.

Unfortunately for me, the science is near-magic handwaving. So, speculative science, or even an exploration of real science, this is not. However, the novel does that other thing that science fiction can do – caution us about the broad role of science and research in human society. For that, my rating comes back up to four and a half, rounded up to five stars.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ben Winters starts off with a bang, with a kidnapping of a woman. We get the woman's POV, then later the kidnapper's, then we move to, of all people, a bureaucrat in the Food and Drug Administration who oversees the regulation of medical devices.

It all comes together as you know it must, but while the title may lead you to think that it might be another timey-wimey book about time travel, that's not what Winters is about. Yes, it involves time, but not in the way you think. The concept of time itself is actually the Maguffin that drives the plot.

The FDA bureaucrat is the linchpin of the novel, and her interactions with her aging mother and binary-gendered child are a delight. She turns out to be the person who won't let things slide. In an era where government functionaries are routinely excoriated and belittled, this is a refreshing change.

Winters writes fast-moving prose that conforms to the style of a thriller, but he has the heart of a science fiction writer in developing the concepts that the novel is centered on. It makes for a propulsive read; I knocked off this 277 page book in one day. I should have slowed down to enjoy the prose, but I couldn't wait to see what would happen next, and what character he would shift to.

It's hard to stick a landing, but Winters does it by giving the final word to a secondary character who we've only really seen in third-person viewpoint before, who provides the first-person key insight that nails the resolution of the concept. It may be cynical, but it's true. Unfortunately.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge Ben Winters fan, starting with his Last Policeman Trilogy and especially Underground Airlines. If you haven't read these, you should do so immediately!

Big Time starts off with a bang--After being kidnapped for no apparent reason, Allie somehow manages to escape, and ends up at a nearby hospital as a Jane Doe. Grace, an FDA investigator, is called in to identify a mysterious medical device implanted in Allie. Allie runs away from the hospital and tries to figure out why she's suddenly having memories of things she know couldn't have happened to her.

Both Grace and Allie's kidnapper are furiously trying to track Allie down, and Grace is also trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. The story moves quickly and kept me on the edge of my seat. A great combination of a fast-paced thriller and an intriguing science fiction premise makes Big Time another winner from Ben Winters.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of story I can really get into--speculative science, unexplained memory loss, nuanced parent-child relationships. I read it in two days. There are several POV characters: Allie, who is kidnapped off a playground, snatched away from her baby daughter; Desiree, the kidnapper hunting for revenge; and Grace, whose brilliant mind has been absorbed into a dead-end job at the FDA. The action starts off right away with Allie escaping her kidnapper and searching for a way to get back to her home, but then Allie becomes haunted by memories that seem to come out of nowhere. Her goal changes as she decides to follow this urge. Grace is a scientist who studies ports - these are lines that allow medicines to infuse when a person is not in the hospital (hope I am explaining this right). She comes across one of these that is completely unusual--and it appears to be attached to Allie. Grace's goal of saving a woman she doesn't even know is complicated by her teen child and mother who horn into her business. As Grace learns more, consequences pile up, leading to more action and a breathtaking revelation. Those who enjoyed Dark Matter would really like this one. I loved The Quiet Boy also, but this one really caught me.

[Alice G. Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Middle-aged professional women don't talk, act, or think of themselves the way Mr. Winters imagines Grace. It's interesting - this author usually has a male protagonist in his speculative fiction and he does much better. The plot, dialogue, characters and pacing were nothing in comparison to The Last Policeman and many of his other books. FWIW, The Last Policeman is one of my favorite books of all time. I was so disappointed.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

It can be hard to write coherently about speculative time shenanigans, and Big Time didn't rise to the occasion. I feel like I would have enjoyed the relationship between Grace and River if that had been explored more. As it is, we waste what turns out to be our precious time figuring out Desiree's hourly rate. I don't think I have ever cared about something less.

[Shannon A · Rating 5 out of 5]

A can’t-put- down thought-provoking thriller that will grab you in the opening chapter; twist your sense of time and space while simultaneously remind you of the fragile humanity of the world.

[Maryellen Woodside · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book. The story did not engage me.