I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom cover art

I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

A Novel

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I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

By: Jason Pargin
Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
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About this listen

A standalone darkly humorous thriller set in modern America's age of anxiety, by New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin.

Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC.

But there are rules:

He cannot look inside the box.

He cannot ask questions.

He cannot tell anyone.

They must leave immediately.

He must leave all trackable devices behind.

As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war.

The truth promises to be even stranger, and may change how you see the world.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2024 Jason Pargin (P)2024 Macmillan Audio Adventure Dark Humour Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Thriller & Suspense Witty

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Critic reviews

"Strident and timely, the dark humor of this wild standalone adventure from Pargin evokes satirists like Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams for a new age... It’s a raucous roller-coaster ride."—Publisher's Weekly

"A road trip through America that is equal parts hilarious and terrifying. Jason understands humanity better than most, and it’s inspiring that his diagnosis is ultimately optimistic."—Daniel O'Brien, Senior Writer, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

"I was hooked from the first page. If I'm honest, from the first sentence or two. Jason has a rare gift for delivering High Weirdness coated in a sticky layer of real life, deeply relatable shit that forces you to see yourself in whatever weirdo or maniac he introduces. It's a rare gift, but he's got a lot of those. You should read this book."—Robert Evans, Host of Behind the Bastards
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What a wacky story. I really liked how it pulled on so much modern pop culture and simultaneously offered thought provoking philosophical concepts that, honestly, I think just pass most folk by. Also, the authors words at the end - brilliant.
Take a bow! I follow him on TikTok and his videos are brilliant. That’s what put me on to this book. I’m now away to look up his other work.

Thoroughly enjoyable and insightful

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This noval is comical, gripping and incitful story full of interesting reflections of the way modern society is changing and has been interwoven with the massive collective consciousness, which is the world wide web.

An comical, gripping and incitful story.

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Brilliant storytelling,excellent narration, just an out and out five star story. I went in blind and so should you. thank me later!

An amazing book!

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great book by Jason Pargin & wonderful performance by Ari Fliakos, will definetly keep an eye out for other books that he narrates. highly recomended

loved it

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Come for the plot, stay for the social commentary. Funny and insightful. Another great book from JP

Fantastic book - all should read

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his best book so far. laugh out loud moments and some interesting perspectives put across

What's in the box?

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Jason Pargin tells such wonderful, terrifying stories. Every character is written with such care, especially when they are irredeemably awful. This book is so relevant it hurts, and will appeal to anybody who has had their heart in their throat at the thought of losing their phone. It's uncomfortable, enthralling and worryingly prophetic all at once and I for one demand more.

Jason Pargin does it again!

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I've read Jason's work since he was publishing under his pseudonym David Wong. Each book is better, each one showing an increase in skill as a writer. This, as his latest work, is his best, in my opinion. In this book Jason maintains his main concern at the heart of his work, which I think is the humanity of his characters and, ultimately, of his readers. He is fascinated with the motivations of people and our complexity, and with initially incomprehensible situations we can find ourselves in. And that tragic misunderstandings are both easy to fall into and potentially enormously dangerous is another common concern of his. In this work, he subverts his own past writing, confounding the expectations of people who are his long-time readers, giving us something very fresh and moving up his game. He explores characters and themes in this book, like the isolation drive so common in much of modern Anglophone culture, that I don't think he had the confidence and skill before this book to fully take on. This book is much less lurid, much less over the top than either his John and Dave series (lots of cosmic horror) or his Suits (lots of sci-fi) series. But it's still funny and entertaining, though with a much more conventional 'real-world' setting. He should be very pround of this. It's a very good, very humane book by a man who both loves and is incredibly frustrated by people.

Jason Pargin attains excellence

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Jason Pargin has always been one of my favourite authors but I haven’t seen him flex this hard before. This is such an incredible, perfectly self contained story that ponders the absurdity of our modern relationship to technology. It’s become one of my favourite books and I can’t wait to listen to it again.

He just keeps getting better!

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I got this as it popped up on a recommended 'next listen' list and, liking the title, took a punt.

DNF - got a few hours in, persevering that far because I wanted to know what was in the box but it's not for me.

Totally unlikeable main character and the whiney nasal drone being used for him being the key reasons for not continuing.

I don't think I'm the target audience for this.

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