Quirky characters, quirky plotting, and a quirky voice make for a hip, funny, and highly satirical thriller. An egotistical editor of the latest, coolest cybermag finds himself running for his life with a magazine intern after she totes up big losses on his account in an online gambling scam. She thinks it's just a game. The mobsters behind the site think otherwise and they want their 200 grand. Although it's an unlikely romance and there's plenty to go wrong in off-beat ways, Sinclair, author of Net Chick: A Smart Girl Guide to the Wired World, keeps you turning the pages of her first novel as she builds the suspense while gibbing the all-too-self-serious denizens of the cyberculture world.
From Library Journal
Sinclair, identified as cofounder of bOING bOING magazine and otherwise a cyberchick of great renown, offers a picaresque first novel that shuttles between the real world of electronic journal publishing and the cyberworld where the druggy drones go to play. Kat, a young but not naive intern, inadvertently loses $200,000 of a mere acquaintance's money in an electronic casino. When the enforcers try to shake Jim down for the Digicash, he and Kat try to hide in the netherworld. For long stretches, the writing just marks time, then suddenly there is an explosive passage whose imagery floods the brain. As a work of satire in which all the characters are prickly neurotics, this first novel is weirdly reminiscent of the movie Fargo, sharing its wily intelligence, scary jerks, and whining. As the alt culture grows up, readers will expect more from Sinclair, but this is an energetic and promising debut.?Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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