Synopses & Reviews
Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there's more to this project than she had expected.
Still, Cayce is her father's daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death.
Review
"Gibson's narrative is more relaxed than it has been in years....Some elements could have easily been jettisoned, but for every misstep there's a dash of pure, beautiful insight....A slick but surprisingly humane piece of work from the father of cyberpunk." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[E]legant, entrancing....[Gibson's] sentences slide from silk to steel, and take tonal joy rides from the ironic to the earnest....Structurally, this may be his most confident novel. The secondary characters and their subplots are more fully developed, right down to their personal e-mail styles." Lisa Zeidner, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Numb at the loss of her ex-security expert father at the World Trade Center, Cayce Pollard refuses to give up on a secret assignment which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia to investigate Internet videos that are attracting a cult following. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death.
About the Author
As the author of Neuromancer, William Gibson is credited with having coined the term "cyberspace" and envisioned the Internet-and its effects on daily life-before any such things existed. Many of his descriptions and metaphors have entered the culture as images of human relationships in the "wired" age. This is his first novel set firmly in the present.