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 everywhere: 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 InfoWar: 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 narrator’s nickname), especially since there’s no hiding from the CCTVs that are everywhere and in the control of people who would rather he did not solve the crime.
- ISBN13 9780002259033
- Publish Date 3 September 2001
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 October 2004
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Voyager
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 400
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk