L.V. Pederson’s Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds is a gripping thriller that delivers a high-octane narrative packed with crime, intrigue, and the relentless pursuit of justice. This fast-paced story plunges readers into a dangerous game of cat and mouse, as the characters race against time to track a terrorist who has been hiding in plain sight since the events of 9/11.

What stands out most in this novel is its ability to weave a complex yet accessible plot. Pederson’s writing captures the intensity of the stakes, with each twist and turn keeping the reader on edge. The story’s pacing is impeccable, never letting up as it delves into themes of loyalty, sacrifice, and moral ambiguity in the face of global terror.

The characters are equally compelling. Each is richly developed, with motivations and personalities that feel authentic and multidimensional. They’re not just pawns in the action—they’re people navigating a chaotic and dangerous world, grappling with the weight of their decisions. Their depth adds emotional stakes to the story, making it more than just an adrenaline-filled ride.

For a reader who might not typically gravitate toward action-packed crime thrillers, Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds has a rare magnetic quality. It’s the kind of book that hooks you from the first page and refuses to let go. The storyline is sharp and cinematic, and the conclusion leaves you wanting more, making it a prime candidate for a potential series.

Pederson has crafted a taut, unforgettable thriller that balances high-stakes action with deeply human moments. Fans of intelligent, character-driven suspense will find this a standout read—and one that begs for a sequel.

L.V. Pederson is a new author for me, but after reading the blurb for Nine Minutes, Eleven Seconds, I was instantly intrigued and knew I had to read it. Within just one chapter, I was hooked. Pederson's ability to create such multi-dimensional characters turns this story into an absolute page-turning thriller.

Madison's journey pulled me in so completely that I found myself on edge several times as the chapters flew by. Without giving away any spoilers, I can say this book tackles an incredibly emotional and intense subject for a thriller. The tension builds steadily, paragraph by paragraph, keeping you guessing until the final chapters. It’s an utterly addictive read that’s hard to put down.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing be the opportunity to review this fast paced thriller.

Madison is excited to have secured a job at a Silicon Valley large tech company, she has a had a rough time recently and is looking for a new start. Her new boss makes her feel uncomfortable as she feels there is something not quite right with him and we should always follow out gut feelings.

A body of a young woman is found and this begins a journey that will affect Madison's life in more ways than she could imagine, is her dream of a fabulous new job now in doubt?

The book is told in multiple POV's and for a fair chunk of the book I was unsure as to where this was going and it took a while for it to hold my full attention but once it did I became invested in the plot. Madison then realises her gut was right and once she works out what is behind his shady behaviour, she knows her new boss is not a man she will think highly of and she is keen to see him brought down. Soon the FBI is involved and Madison will play a large part it the outcome of what is happening.

Quite an enjoyable read the the tension and suspence increasing as the story progresses, and for me the end brings it all to a satisfying conclusion which elevated my star rating.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy, all opinions expressed are my own.

Wow, I haven't read a book this captivating and suspenseful all year. Never read this author before either but this grabbed me right out of the gate and I couldn't put it down. It was definitely scary as well as it based around what terrorists can do to us as a nation to bring us down and it even made it sound plausible. Us common folk have no idea of just how intelligent and wicked our enemies can be to concoct scenarios that can threaten us as a nation. My hubby read it first and stated "just give the bad guys ideas..."

Disclaimer - this does have some background of the tragic happenings in NY at the Twin Towers on 9/11. The main character Madison, has felt guilt all her life for not insisting that her daddy stay home for her birthday party as he was boarding one of those planes to go on a business trip. She was a small child and wanted him to stay. If she had whined more maybe he would not have boarded that fateful flight and lost his life. At the last minute she did run after him but couldn't catch up with him and she fell on her knees. The man that stumbled over her and picked her up would play a crucial role in this novel come years later when she is an adult.

We found this absolutely un-put-downable and I don't give 5-stars out easily but this one earned it. Such good character development and twisty fast paced action. I could definitely see this as a movie, and it would be a good one. Never a dull moment and a satisfying conclusion.

Get your copy Jan 10, 2025 at your favorite retailer. Hang on to your hat, you're in for a ride.
My thanks to #NetGalley for the e-arc and to the publisher Raconteur and author Pederson for the opportunity to read and review this entertaining novel.

L.V. Pederson is a new to me author. Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds had me hooked from the start and kept my attention to the very end. It's a gripping thriller that reads like an action movie in your mind. We follow Madison Maxwell. After Samantha Dockett is killed in a hit-and-run accident, Madison takes over her position at Know, Inc. The VP of Know, Inc looks very familiar to Madison. Madison has an interesting past. Her father was on American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. This trauma has impacted her life deeply and she becomes consumed with trying find Mohamed Atter. He is the terrorist behind the World Trade Center attacks and his body was never found. She's convinced he is still alive. She becomes convinced that her new boss is Mohammed Atter. I really enjoyed this story!

I really enjoyed this book. Thanks to Net Galley and Raconteur 888 Press for the ARC. A little bit conspiracy, a little bit thriller. Madison’s new job at a tech company takes on an unexpected twist. Her new boss seems familiar. Suddenly, she finds herself involved with the FBI and her whole world unravels. Great page turner.

Great thriller that kept me up late into the night! Madison is an executive assistant at KNOW T.J. Khan is her boss and she has a strange feeling she's met him before. Then she meets Will at a support group as she continues to have nightmares about 9-11 as her father was on the plane that crashed into the towers. To add to her distress, she sees the same man on the bus every day; Is she being followed? Then we have Schmidt, a blogger/podcaster who knows an American visiting Berlin has a videotape of the 9-11 coverup. Madison discovers an even bigger plot against America but isn't sure how to stop it. It's a scary thrill ride to the end to discover if these evil geniuses can be stopped!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me this book in exchange for a fair and frank review.

I did not like this book at all. I tried hard and got almost halfway but it just jumped back and forth all the time. There was n9 plot and the characters were just wishy washy.

Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds by L. V. Pederson is a very highly recommended action/suspense thriller for the right reader. This is a great choice for those who like big conspiracies, can suspend a large dose of disbelief, and won't be bothered by the tie-in to 9/11.

The opening scene will grab your attention as a young woman is killed in a hit and run accident. Then the action follows Madison on her first day as an executive assistant at Know, Inc., a Silicon Valley tech giant. She is full of anxiety today and from her past, but co-worker Nicole offers to help her. Madison's father was a passenger on one of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and died on 9/11. Now, her new boss, T.J. Khan, reminds her of someone and her anxiety rises.

She meets Will at a support group and shares her concerns. She is sure her new boss, is Mohamed Attar, a 9/11 conspirator. Through Will's computer and hacking skills, the two figure out that she may be right and he has likely had extensive cosmetic surgery​. Just as Madison and Will are setting their plan into motion to expose him, the FBI, CIA, and NSA jump in, stop the two, and explain that their large scale, ongoing operation and surveillance involving Khan is bigger and wide spread. Lead Special Agent Niles recruits Madison to assist the operation.

After the opening, the plot slows down to set the pieces into place and you need to start setting the disbelief aside. Madison is a complicated, fully realized character who struggles with guilt, trauma, and the impact of her father's death on her life. The other characters are not as well-developed, but follow a standard type. Basically, the protagonists are all good and the antagonists are all evil.

Once the action begins to take off, Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds sets a lightning-fast pace, the action is relentless, the danger increases, and all the complicated pieces of the conspiracy and the operation begin to fall into place. The short chapters help keep track of all the players and help propel the compelling narrative to it's heart-stopping conclusion.

Actually, the start of the novel turned me off, but once the action starts, it gets exponentially better with each page and becomes impossible to put down. It's not a perfect novel, but it certainly is an action/suspense thriller. 4.5 stars. Thanks to Raconteur 888 for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

The review will be published on Barnes & Noble and Amazon (and LibraryThing and BookBub once added).

I have had a really good run of 4 and 5 star reads towards the end of 2024 – I knew it was too good to be true!

As I Brit, I did not register the hint in the title of 9 Minutes 11 Seconds – from the blurb it sounded like it would be a crime thriller set in a Silicon Valley office. What it is, however, is a 9/11 conspiracy theory story and boy, is it bad!

I have so many things to say about this book and I don’t think any of them are particularly nice, there are no redeeming qualities - it’s one of the worst books I’ve read in the past 5 years. We’ll start with main character Madison, who reads very much like a young, female main character written by an older, male author. She is unlikeable, she is difficult to empathise with and she is incredibly unrealistic. At the start of the book, she is sexually harassed in front of an entire office of her new co-workers by her older boss and takes it as a compliment. She is then taken aside and warned by a fellow female coworker to be careful if she’s ever alone with the boss as he likes to do ‘more than flirt if you’re up for it’. How does Madison respond to this? ‘That’ll be the day’. Firstly, what does that even mean, and secondly, what woman that L.V. Pederson has ever met would respond this way?

We soon find out that Madison’s father was a passenger on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Centre on 9/11. The crux of the plot, it is revealed, is that Madison believes her boss is actually one of the terrorists involved (who was sitting next to her father on the plane), but with plastic surgery is now living it up as a CEO in Silicon Valley. I had originally thought she had been chasing him down and got the new job to expose him or something, but this actually seems to be just an idea she has in the spur of the moment. As well as the blatant misogyny, the book is actually quite racist, with the phrase ‘Dirty Arab’ being used multiple times, as well as the fact that the only character who is not a white American is ‘obviously’ a terrorist in disguise.

The plot is completely unbelievable and unrealistic at every turn – Madison decides to confide her idea in a man she has only just met on a first date. It turns out that not only is he a secret billionaire, but he is also a computer hacker who has access to a company that do fully automatic facial recognition and comparison. When this isn’t as accurate as they’d like, he then hacks into the CIA to use their software instead – I mean, really!

The writing style is also dreadful - the dialogue is stilted and the parts set in the FBI just use cliched sentences, rather than actually having a realistic conversation. As a trigger warning, there is also self-harm depicted in this book, as well as suicidal thoughts.

When I got to the casual hacking of the CIA’s database, I gave up and DNFd - it is one of the worst books I’ve read in the last 5 years. With unrealistic characters, a plot so bad it’s laughable and stilted dialogue, as well as the sexist and racist remarks running throughout, I highly recommend avoiding this book. Thank you to Raconteur 888 for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a (very) honest review.

Madison discovers on her first day at a Silicon Valley company that she was hired because her predecessor had died. She soon discovers that her boss T.J. Khan looks oddly familiar and soon she realizes why and also who he resembles to. With the help of her friend Will, she gets confirmation of this, too and the plan of revenge starts forming in her head.
Suddenly though, Madison and Will find themselves in the FBI office and Madison is forced to join a secret mission to catch her boss before something terrible happens.

It's slow-burn, got more exciting towards the end. The plot twists weren't that jaw-dropping and would have expected more curveballs in general. For me there was the most potential in Will's character, I wasn't sure about his intentions until the end.

I may have not been the target audience for this as I'm not American, but I think my biggest problem with this book was probably the general conflict of my values ​​- I absolutely did not like this topic. That kind of organized crime is just something I'd rather not hear about, and the fact that some of the characters were based on a real-life event really annoyed me. It seemed kind of out of place to use that as the source of inspiration. The numbers 9 and 11 in the title are not coincidental .

This was a rather good thriller I must say. Pederson certainly knows how to create a good, thrilling and surprising plot. After all, the catastrophe, well one actually happened in his narrative whereas most of the time the protagonist manages to stop the villain just before any real horror happens. This is what I expected and I’m glad I was not proven right.

However, I unfortunately didn’t really connect with the main characters, with Niles a little but not at all with Maddie and Will. I’m glad that the italicized internal monologue was not so prominent towards the end of the book as I did not really need it. In general my main critique is the interpersonal, especially the relationship of Will and Maddie. It felt forced, very quick and therefore confusing. I find it hard to believe that Maddie would trust someone so quickly and also that she’d just agree to the Paris trip for instance. It kinda went against what I though her character was.

While I felt the characters and their relationships were a bit rushed I rather enjoyed the general plot. I liked the background story, I like the links of the FBI set up, the inclusion of the crazy conspiracy theorist (though I’d have liked some more of it), the inclusion of identity alteration and so many other details that made the narrative‘s tension come to life.

This book is on its way to being a movie. This was a great thriller. I did not see the twist coming and I read a lot of thrillers and mystery books. This book has a great pace and felt believable. There was so much tension I stayed up till 2am finish this book because I needed to know the answers! Check the triggers to see if this is for you. I was invested in all the characters in this intense thriller!

Thank you, Net Galley, the author, and the publisher, for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds is the first book by L.V. Pederson, and I can't wait to read more! I really wasn't sure if I was ready to read anything, even fiction, related to 9/11, however, I'm glad I did. This book is a roller-coaster of emotions, and had me eagerly devouring it! The plot is excellent, the characters well-developed, and the story told with reverence to those events, and tying it all appropriately to the tale being told. Great story, great book, grab it on January 28, 2025!

#NetGalley #NineMinutesElevenSeconds

This book was so cool it felt very much like a spy thriller. Like who killed the coworker and is she next and why did the coworker get killed. I also loved the setting of it being in a silicon valley job. Very much did they do it to protect the company vibes

Wow ummm well that whole book was unexpected heheheheh. I can definitely say I have never read a book like it. It was a fast paced book that had me having moments of worry for some of the characters for sure. The author did a good job keeping you interested and I really enjoyed getting so many povs in this story. This book kinda reminded me of a season of 24 in just the whole gotta solve this mystery or millions could die!!!! But it was a fun read and maybe below a 4 star rating but I bumped it a little because once the ball got rolling I couldn’t stop reading.

What a book! Literally couldn’t put it down. Creative plot and great story telling! Good character development and a good twist on a true event. Cannot wait for the next one from Pederson!

Maddison lost her dad in 9/11. She’s just taken a new job in a new city hoping for a fresh start, but there’s something about her new boss that’s familiar.

This fast paced action/thriller was a fun read.
This book is written similar to a movie. You jump from
Different POV’s like you would movie scenes which is something I hadn’t read much of which was fun!

This book didn’t have a huge amount of character development which I don’t mind but I did feel like things happened too fast between certain character. That’s just a personal preference of mine though.

This is a good debut novel and a fantastic read for anyone who likes Liam Neeson thrillers and conspiracy theories.

Nine Minutes Eleven Seconds by L. V. Pederson is a twisted thriller about a woman who is desperate to escape her 9/11 tragedy survivor's guilt. She begins a new job as an executive assistant but red flags go up on her first day. She understandably struggles with anxiety and is awkward socially. Her apartment is nearly empty, as is her life. But she meets someone who empathizes with her plight. She soon becomes a target from all sides and relies on her gut instincts to dig her way out..

This novel is not what I had hoped for and expected and left me disappointed. Rather than enjoying my time with it, I found myself skimming and eventually gave up on its infuriating main characters and predictability. It is also too farfetched to be believable. Unfortunately, this is a DNF for me but it will appeal to others who enjoy action thrillers.

ARC Review: Nine Minutes, Eleven Seconds
Rating: 4.5/5

Thank you, Netgalley and Raconteur 88!

Nine Minutes, Eleven Seconds is a gripping, emotionally charged novel written with the intensity of a cinematic thriller. The book hooks you from the first scene, delivering a shot of pure action and an emotional roller-coaster that will leave you breathless.

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This story deals with the tragic events of 9/11.

The narrative begins with six-year-old Madison, who struggles between the desire for her father to stay with her and the guilt of feeling selfish for wanting to keep him from his flight. That devastating moment changes her life forever—her father was on one of the planes that day.

Fast forward to the present: Madison, now an adult, faces an unimaginable opportunity. She unknowingly steps into a chance to confront and possibly get even with the man responsible for planning the attack. The question looms large: will justice be served, and at what cost?

This story’s strength lies in its heart-pounding pacing and deep emotional core. The scenes are written with vivid clarity, almost as if the reader is watching a high-stakes movie unfold. Madison’s inner turmoil and journey of grief, resilience, and reckoning are profoundly moving.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced, deeply emotional thriller with complex moral dilemmas, Nine Minutes, Eleven Seconds delivers in spades. It’s a story about the scars of tragedy, the weight of justice, and the strength it takes to face the past.