Description:

London, in the aftermath of the Infowar. Surveillance cameras stand on every street corner, their tireless gaze linked to an artificial intelligence system. Censors patrol the borders of the Internet. A young woman is murdered before the gaze of eager voyeurs.

A policeman sidelined to a backwater department seizes on the chance to contribute to this high-profile murder case, but soon finds himself caught up in a web of intrigue. Why was Sophie Booth's murder broadcast over the Internet? What is the link between her murder and London's new surveillance system? Who is the self-styled "Avenger," and why does he communicate only by e-mail?

Whole Wide World is 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.

Amazon.com Review

If there is any justice, the excellent conspiracy thriller Whole Wide World will vault award-winning author Paul McAuley into the front rank of bestselling authors.

In the wake of a virulent "information war," England has become a police state with surveillance cameras on every street corner, linked by an evolving artificial intelligence. The government controls all access to the Internet. Privacy is a fantasy. Porn is illegal. But a young British woman manages to transmit her sexual escapades over the World Wide Web--and the acts culminate in the live broadcast of her own murder. But even as another woman is slain in the same manner, the war veteran-policeman Dixon finds himself being pressured off the case by powerful sources ranging from his superior officers to the dead woman's uncle, the powerful CEO who created the artificial intelligence that sees all and, perhaps, knows all.

Paul McAuley has received the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

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.
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