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In Artificial Reality, everything is permitted and nothing is forbidden--or so they say. Run a con game in AR, and the law does not prosecute; have sex with a virtual child persona, and the police do not interfere. But infringe on a powerful corporation's copyright and the law rushes in. And so Detective Lieutenant Doré Konstantin unhappily finds herself appointed Chief Officer of the TechnoCrime AR Division. Virtual crimes are almost impossible to solve, her two-person staff is usually assigned elsewhere, and she spends so much of her life pursuing software pirates in AR that her sanity may be in danger. Things can't get any worse.
Then she is assigned to track a cyberstalker known as "Dervish," whose virtual persona is capable of manipulating AR in unprecedented ways. Konstantin reluctantly acknowledges Dervish's victim may be right: Dervish may have done the impossible. He may have traded places with an Artificial Intelligence, letting the AI take possession of his body as his mind escapes into the cyberverse of Artificial Reality, which he can manipulate as no software, even AI, ever could--impossible manipulations that include deleting all the exits from AR, and perhaps even killing the trapped investigator, Doré Konstantin.
Dervish Is Digital is the witty, sharp-edged, hardboiled sequel to the equally exciting and stylish SF mystery Tea from an Empty Cup. --Cynthia Ward
From Publishers Weekly
British author Cadigan (Fools; Synners) returns to the provocative Artificial Reality multiverse of Tea from an Empty Cup (1998) for an equally intriguing sequel. Promoted to the dubious post of chief officer in charge of TechnoCrime, AR division, Det. Lieutenant Dor‚ Konstantin maintains her ironic view of the off-balance world of AR and the people who frequent it. Artificial Reality is a new and separate country, with rules and customs alien to the Real world ("as the screens were obliged by law to remind you before each and every session in AR, nothing was true, everything was a lie, and all of it in billable time"). While checking reports that a casino ring in AR's "low-down Hong Kong" has been brainwashing clients, Konstantin stumbles into a similar investigation by a separate police agency or so they would have her believe. Meanwhile, AR-based clothing designer Susannah Ell wants to file stalking charges against her ex-husband, Hastings Dervish. The problem, she says, is that Dervish is digital: somehow he's managed to leave his body behind and enter AR completely. In a world where reality is completely subjective, Konstantin's search for the truth takes her once again through the shifting planes of AR's consensual hallucination. Cadigan's writing is crisp and tight as ever in this brisk cyber adventure, as told through Konstantin's wry observations. Once again the author draws the reader into a strange but fully realized world whose only constant is its unflinching view of human nature. Agent, Merilee Heifetz. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
As the head investigator for Techno-Crime, AR Division, Detective Lieutenant Dor? Konstantin spends her time chasing criminals in Artificial Reality. When she receives a request to track down an online stalker, she becomes involved with the elusive and deadly person known as Dervish, and the lines between reality and virtual existence threaten to disappear. Cadigan returns to the cyber-noir world of Tea from an Empty Cup with her second installment of a series featuring a quick-thinking, savvy female detective trying to make a difference in an uncaring world. For most sf collections. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Cadigan returns to characters from Tea from an Empty Cup (1998), primarily Dore Konstantine, a cop who heads a "techno crimes" unit whose other two members are usually out on loan to auto theft. The tale opens with Konstantine on the job, busting an arms dealer in AR (alternative reality). A roller-coaster ride begins when she gets a call from Ell, a high-profile fashion designer, who reports that her ex, Hasting Dervish, is stalking her online. Dervish, she says, is digital. Konstantine is naturally skeptical--after all, everything in AR is a lie. Then the disorientation induced by Lowdown Hong Kong casinos and other, seedier, parts of AR begins to change her mind. The beauty of Cadigan's yarn lies not in the solution to the crime but in the hallucinatory lunacy of its world, in which even genuine reality is rather surrealistic, particularly as far as Konstantine's claustrophobic ex-partner and his rooftop dwelling are concerned. Although Konstantine's realizations at the end may not satisfy, they are consistent with the fun-house quality of her detective work. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Her fiction is ambitious and brilliantly executed. Cadigan is a major talent." - William Gibson
"Hacker fiction isn't exclusively a men's club, as Pat Cadigan demonstrates in novel after good novel."--Entertainment Weekly
"A tightly plotted, crisply written novel that fits the classic noir mystery template set down by the likes of Raymond Chandler more comfortably than anything William Gibson has ever written."-Andrew Leonard, Salon Magazine
Book Description
Detective Lieutenant Doré Konstantin is up against it.
Konstantin is Chief Officer in charge of TechnoCrime, Artificial Reality Division. It sounds better than it is - in fact, the AR Division consists of three people and a case load of nearly impossible to solve crimes.
Now, as if handling her heavy case load almost single-handed weren't bad enough, she's got a stalker to deal with.
A woman named Susannah Ell claims that she is being stalked by her ex-husband, Hasting Dervish. It seems implausible at first - Dervish is an extraordinarily rich and powerful man, who should have better things to do. But as Konstantin starts to look into it, she discovers that it's not quite so impossible to believe: Dervish has traded places with an Artificial Intelligence, and is busy committing crimes no one has ever thought of before.
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