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A chilling murder mystery and a gripping conspiracy thriller set in a world where information is the universal currency, and some people will do anything to be able to control it.London, the second decade of the twenty-first century, two years after the InfoWar. The cameras are smart, tireless, and linked together by the Autonomous Distributed Expert Surveillance System, a vast, cold, unsympathetic system that's still testing its limits. There's no escape from its gaze; everyone's a suspect. But there's a flaw in the system, a way of outwitting its gaze, and someone has been murdered because of it.The high explosive and microwave bombs were set off by terrorists in the City; viruses shut down cooling fans inside computers and started thousands of fires; bank accounts ran back to zero; phone lines were randomly cross-connected; TV channels transmitted porn or insane rants by computer-generated talking heads; every traffic light in London jammed on red; the Internet went down.Our narrator has kept his rank but not his status since he was seconded to the Information Technology section of the Metropolitan Police. He was badly wounded in the InfoWar and his superiors would rather he took early retirement. But he is called to the scene when Sophie Booth is found dead on a chair in front of three webcams, blood pooling beneath her. And in the ruins of the smashed computers and disabled cameras he sees a way to redeem himself and get back to active duty. So begins a very dangerous game for Minimum (our narrators nickname), especially since theres no hiding from the CCTVs that are everywhere and in the control of people who would rather he did not solve the crime.
When a woman is found murdered in front of live webcams in a hyper-surveilled London, a disgraced police officer sees a chance to reclaim his career by solving the crime. The protagonist, nicknamed Minimum, navigates a post-InfoWar society where the Autonomous Distributed Expert Surveillance System monitors every citizen. Opposed by both the pervasive, cold technology of the state and shadowy figures desperate to keep the system's flaws hidden, he must operate within a world where privacy is obsolete. The narrative unfolds through a first-person perspective, detailing his struggle to maintain relevance while physically and professionally compromised by his past injuries.
This novel presents a bleak vision of a society where the boundaries between public and private life have been erased by technology. The narrative effectively captures the paranoia inherent in a world where every movement is recorded and analyzed by an unfeeling system. Readers often note the author's ability to ground high-concept technological threats in the gritty reality of a post-conflict urban environment. The story functions as both a tense mystery and a cautionary examination of the consequences of total information control. The protagonist's internal struggle provides a necessary human anchor amidst the cold, mechanical nature of the world he inhabits.
Page Count:
400
Publication Date:
2001-01-01
Publisher:
HarperCollins
ISBN-10:
0002259036
ISBN-13:
9780002259033
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