(For example, I wouldn't have a clue how to analyze some of the data he comes up with, let alone know how to find it in the first place.) The premise is simply based on the fact that EVERYBODY leaves some record of their life on some computer system or other, and to those who know how to dig it up, it can be found and utilized - hence this new form of armchair detective, Arthur C. There is true detection in this, based on Dogg's analysis of the gobbledegook he finds searching and hacking through the Internet (and of course he is a superb hacker), although it is provided mostly by on-the-spot deductions based on what turned up in his on-line inquiries. They have an unusual style - instead of chapters they provide gobbets of stuff from the Internet (e-mail, police reports, credit ratings, etc.) on a recto page, with Dogg's commentary and analysis on the verso side, all very trim and seemingly minimal as storytelling. This is the second of these rather frightening thrillers (the first was Dangerous published in 2001).
Lury_Gibson is a collaboration between Adam Lury and Simon Gibson, two British authors who certainly know their high-tech stuff. It's what he's paid to do: track people through their data trails. He doesn't know why - as far as Dogg's concerned, it's just another job. Dogg, data detective, is being paid to follow him around. Gerald Keatring is 6'2", weighs 190 lbs and has a taste for violence and strip clubs. It has not appeared in the US yet (July 2003), but it should. that person A did this, person B did that, and therefore they spent the night together in a hotel in Brighton. As a reader you become adept at spotting the clues, such as from a list of phone calls, credit-card transactions, etc. It works, and actually succeeds both in building suspense, defining the characters without your ever 'meeting' them, and also letting you participate in the detective process, all without any described 'action'. It is all revealed in a novel narrative technique involving one page (recto) consisting of e-mail, expenditures, and other printouts of data he has discovered on the Internet followed (verso) by Dogg's conclusions and comments - back and forth, back and forth. Sam Collier What he discovers, and how, is fascinating. In this case, he is hired to investigate three people who happened at one point to be living in the same flat (he gets hired by an e-mail message stating only: "Garden Flat, 81 Bryanston Road, London NW6. Given that he can access all of anybody's credit-card transactions, e-mail, cell-phone logs, health records, banking accounts, even police reports - you name anything that ever gets recorded and stored electronically - he can not only detect a crime where none was ever suspected, but deduce anything about a person without ever meeting him/her (EXCEPT to suss out motivation, the prime emphasis of the usual 'transcendental' mystery writers of today - Dogg just doesn't care, as Joe Friday would say, 'just give me the facts'). The premise is that Dogg is a great hacker - not in the sense of being a computer nerd, but being experienced in breaking into data bases, tracking down information, and putting it all together. New 'gimmick' really but a reductio ad absurdum. The book is brilliant and pertinent to our times, not a Home Truths Package, 500 pounds for missing persons, all other work on application') - but he does it all over the Internet using his laptop. The detective/PI, Arthur Dogg, is a 'data detective' who works for hire like any traditional private eye ('250 pounds for basic search, the Kind, but what makes it fascinating is the methodology. Coincidentally, one of the partners is named Gibson, because this is a cyberspace detective novel, in a sense. That intimate little office e-mail you penned last week - you think it has disappeared? Not a chance. You could be his next client - or his next victim. What starts as an innocent investigation becomes an intimate intrigue of drugs, sex and suspicious deaths. With one little fact, Dogg unravels a hidden world. Give him someone's name and he'll sell you a life story. Putting them together, discovering your secrets. They're just a set of unrelated data, right? Dream on. Maybe it seems like individual facts don't matter. Facts that exist in a timeless present, because nothing can ever be truly erased. How much do you want to know? Every move you take, every payment you make creates data.
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