A man returns home to attend a funeral and gets more than he bargained for in Russell's (Celestial Dogs) latest, an over-the-top cyber noir. The unnamed protagonist, an erstwhile whiz kid and boy detective (let's call him B.D.), grew up to become a formidable hacker. Now, his quaint Midwestern hometown has been renamed Ideaville, a bland, Silicon Valley–style paradise. But beneath the shiny exterior is a cauldron of corruption, violence and psychic decay. B.D. isn't surprised, since as a teenager he witnessed (and unwittingly participated in) a scandal that left his family shattered. The funeral is for Sandy, his childhood sweetheart, who was apparently killed in a car accident. He figures out that she's not really dead, but life has been so cruel to her that she might as well be. There are plenty of demons B.D. must face, including his father, a former chief of police whose corruption and infidelities destroyed him, and Roach Blackwell, the thug who stole Sandy from B.D. decades ago. Roach now rules Ideaville with an iron fist, and his lucrative software company is in a bitter feud with two firms whose maniacal chiefs plumb the depths of depravity. B.D. hatches a plan using his hacking skills to lead the rival firms toward a bloody showdown while he sifts through the debris of his past and tries to win Sandy's love again. Unfortunately, Russell wastes much of the book on exposition and flashbacks, and the emotional turmoils and scandalous revelations too often lapse into melodrama. His black humor is fine when it works, but is otherwise a tangle of adolescent innuendo along the lines of "Been there, done that, taken the AIDS test afterward." There are plenty of entertaining and inventive moments, but this wild ride hits too many potholes to satisfy. (Sept.)
