'If you have to strip off in the same room as two attractive young women, the question is should you go first, wait for them, do it simultaneously or offer a choice? It was an interesting conundrum, and one I might have been able to solve if I hadn't been bullied into a fifth option, i.e. they undress you '
Crosston Orion Gathercole is a self-proclaimed "mundane." Antisocial, underachieving, and deeply cynical, his pedestrian life in commuter-land UK consists of a lonely flat, a puritanical, wife-abusing landlord, and a pathological hatred of authority. His only real escape is the internet. But a casual, late-night email changes everything when he accepts a tantalising, random invitation to join an intriguing online game from a user known only as Game Girl.
However, this is no game. It is an insidious trap.
Instantly, this utterly ordinary, unsuspecting soul is dragged into a dark underworld of sick perversion, brutal crimes and macabre rituals invariably filmed by a sinister group, the Watchers, all for the benefit of obscenely rich clients.
Triggered by a series of bizarre events, a corrupted computer file, and a horrific murder, Crosston allies with his landlord's long-suffering wife in an attempt to identify Game Girl. Steered across the globe to San Francisco, they meet a ragtag resistance group dedicated to destroying Game Girl's legacy and from the streets of San Francisco to the shores of Hawaii together they vow to end her global vendetta.
Does a nondescript, self-identifying 'drone' have what it takes to stem a global tide of tragedy, or will Game Girl's psychotic vendetta claim him as her next victim?