Paul McAuley is better known as a writer of intelligent science fiction, so this is a departure for him.
As a police procedural, it works well. He has created a likeable heroine, a suitably grotesque villian and vicious sidekick, a reasonably intriguing scenario and assorted supporting cast. The plot, involving on-line gaming in part, moves at a fair pace (after a slow start) and comes to an appropriately complicated denoument. The book is worth a read.
But, I have to wonder why he bothered. As an exercise in the genre? The whole thing feels as if he deliberately set out to take absolutely all the standard cliches of police procedurals and prove he could fit them together. The heroine came into police work after trying other things and has been promoted to detective early; she has a conveniently out-of-sight but not out-of-mind ex-boyfriend, and a fling with a character who could be recurring if required. She teams up with a fiesty single mum cop, and then another one. She has a kooky mother with an interest in police work (mercifully, this one doesn't pack a .45 and crash viewings in funeral parlours). She has a gruff but understanding boss, but comes up against a smalltown redneck sherrif. The villian is grotesque to the point of caricature and the vicious sidekick is, inevitably, ex-Special Forces (and a Brit). Much of the action takes place in spooky backwoods.
Several British SF writers have tried their hand at police novels recently, Charles Stross, China Melville and Ken McLeod (although MacLeod cheats, because "Night Sessions" is also an SF book). Did they get together at a convention and dare each other o write a cop novel? MacAuley plays this book straight (if this was intended to be a satire, then it is far too straight), but I have to say Stross's "Halting States" was more fun.
If you like police procedurals, you will enjoy this. If you are a MacAuley fan, it is worth reading as a curiousity.
Damning with faint praise, I am afraid.