- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Voyager; 1st UK edition edition (3 Sep 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002259036
- ISBN-13: 978-0002259033
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.2 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,551,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Paul McAuley continues to show his SF versatility in Whole Wide World, a noir thriller opening in a near-future London where government obsession with pornography, surveillance and regulating the Internet still hasn't made crime go away. Quite the contrary.
When a girl is slowly, horribly murdered as a sick piece of performance art relayed by WebCams to the world, the undersized detective-inspector narrator becomes obsessed with this case. Though disgraced and stuck in the backwater of the Met's former Information Technology Unit (eclipsed by much sexier IT squads), he doggedly keeps following leads--including red herrings planted by hostile colleagues.
The killing connects to international porn barons, to the twilight world of thuggish "security" firms and contract killers, and to SF hardware secrets of the omnipresent street cameras that allow automatic 24/7 surveillance of absolutely anyone. Who is the "Avenger" who taunts the narrator with e-mail routed through anonymous data havens in prosperous, unregulated Cuba? Meanwhile, atrocities of the recent InfoWar--when data terrorists wreaked havoc on the City--still cast a long, unfair shadow over his career.
When this crime's deeper motives and implications become clear, there's further frustration. Certain villains are beyond British law, or above it. Even the UK government invokes all its powers of censorship to keep the lid on. It's entirely against orders that our DI hero flies to Cuba for a finale of high-tech shenanigans and violent action.
Despite the bleak background of Whole Wide World, there's a thoroughly satisfying outcome. A good, tough and thoughtful SF thriller. --David Langford
Review
‘This is the big one. Fast, intense and right on the edge of the headlines.’ Greg Bear
‘Paul McAuley pulls off that rare balancing act of exploring big concepts while telling an absorbing and entertaining story’ New Scientist
‘Usually you get ideas or voice. With McAuley you get both – in spades. Without question the most exciting of Britain’s new-edge writers’ Michael Marshall Smith
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great read - I hope it does not come close to reality,
By
This review is from: Whole Wide World (Paperback)
This book is a murder story ( a gory one at that) bringing in very neatly the changes to our lives that the Internet has brought. The extrapolation of the effects of CCTV, RIP laws allowing access to all our electronic activity and terrorist activity that destroyed the financial system create a background for a very dark future here in the UK where Cuba(!) is held up as a model for a free society and it is the UK where censorship has run wild. The lead character is damaged by his past experiences as a policeman but has retained a clear view of right and wrong that seems to very blurred in this story (on both sides, criminal and business). Personally, this book has a soundtrack because of the references to music from the period 76-82(ish) - the images conjured up the music of the Clash (sadly , no reference to 'I Fought the Law' and 'Police and Thieves', although that may have been a bit obvious..) of a society barely hanging together works very well indeed. The hero also has a mechanical owl which gives a link to Bladerunner and the same type of society The plot is complicated, and you do wonder on occaision who the 'good guys' are but the story draws you in - I think it would make a very good film as well
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quite a feat,
By A Customer
This review is from: Whole Wide World (Hardcover)
I approached this with trepidation. I'd tried to read McAuley's Arthur C.Clarke award winning 'Fairyland' and just couldn't get on with it, so didn't hold out much hope for a cross-genre exercise. But I'm glad I had a go. It's amazingly topical - a world dominated by the protection, or lack of it, CCTV affords. A murder is screened live on the web and the usual questions arise - who, why, when. But, as with all the best crime novels, the answer is in a totally different direction to your expectations. There are bits of Blade Runner and Le Carre in here - not a bad combination. This will not get any publicity at all, I expect, because McAuley is, at the moment, what publishers call C-List. Let's try and bump him up a bit. It's what he deserves for this clever tale.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Complex but intriguing techno-thriller,
By
This review is from: Whole Wide World (Paperback)
At first glance Whole Wide World appears to be a mainstream thriller, and a definite change of pace from McAuley’s usual science fiction output. In fact, this novel is very close in feel to McAuley’s earlier novel Pasquale’s Angel, as a hard-boiled murder mystery is played out against a familiar but altered background.The setting this time is very near future Britain, where despite the growth of the information age the authorities (aided by the ‘Protect the Children’ act) clamp down on the internet with an almost puritanical zeal. This skewed background gives the novel an interesting grounding, while the lead character follows a more conventional investigation of a net-broadcast murder linked to the designer of the ever-present security camera’s constantly observing the populace. The plot is suitably twisty, with plenty of complex leads to follow, though the story possibly over-extends itself with its Cuban finale dragging out the final confrontation. There’s little attempt to hide the identity of the bad guy throughout, this is a novel that prefers to concentrate on the whys and wherefores. The lead is sympathetic, but while he’s no Dirty Harry ultimately the ‘disgraced cop goes it alone against his superiors wishes’ is a little clichéd and predictable. Not McAuley’s best, but a good solid near-future thriller with some thought-provoking angles on Big Brother technology.
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