About the Author

Paul McAuley worked as a research scientist and lecturer in Britain and the United States for twenty years before becoming a full-time writer. His novels have won the Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell awards. He lives in North London.

Reviews

`A quality novel that further confirms McAuley’s place in the first rank of British SF authors’ Time Out `A chilling thriller from one of Britain’s best SF writers, now turning to crime fiction with awesome ease’ Guardian `Here’s a topically relevant crime thriller full of great narrative twists’ Starburst `McAuley conveys a sense of loss and of ambivalent despair which underpins and gives depth to his dark vision of a future that is not so much near, as already with us’ Interzone `Whole Wide World is a major novel and McAuley is one of our best’ Locus

`A quality novel that further confirms McAuley's place in the first rank of British SF authors' Time Out

`A chilling thriller from one of Britain's best SF writers, now turning to crime fiction with awesome ease' Guardian

`Here's a topically relevant crime thriller full of great narrative twists' Starburst

`McAuley conveys a sense of loss and of ambivalent despair which underpins and gives depth to his dark vision of a future that is not so much near, as already with us' Interzone

`Whole Wide World is a major novel and McAuley is one of our best' Locus

On the heels of last year's near-future novel, The Secret of Life, British author McAuley offers a stunning thriller set in London less than a decade in the future. The U.K. has been transformed by three events: the Infowar, which has wiped out most of the nation's stored computer records; the rise to power of a right-wing government sworn to eliminate all pornographic and violent materials, both hard copy and electronic; and the development of ADESS, the Autonomous Distributed Expert Surveillance System, a huge network of security cameras all guided by an evolving AI, all feeding their information into various police security computers. A market for pornography still exists, however, and young Sophie Booth, a London art student, aims to please, putting on shows for her adoring fans before her apartment's live webcams. Unfortunately, she opens her door to Mr. Wrong one day and is gruesomely murdered in front of those same webcams. A down-on-his-luck London police officer, his career nearly destroyed by false allegations of cowardliness during the Infowar, finds himself at the center of the investigation. Resented, even hated by his fellow officers, threatened by a mysterious and vicious hacker, he puts his life on the line to bring Sophie's murderer to justice. McAuley effectively combines traditional techno-thriller and police procedural techniques with a clear sense of where the World Wide Web at its worst may be going to produce a highly effective, well-crafted and unusually gritty novel that should please fans of both thrillers and computer-oriented hard SF. (May 21) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.