In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates, a dot-com startup company that's just been floated on the London stock exchange. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. For Smith, the investigation seems pointless. But she soon realizes that the virtual world may have a devastating effect in the real one-and that someone is about to launch an attack upon both…

Meet Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh, head of the Innovative Crimes

Investigation Unit, otherwise known as the Rule 34 Squad. They monitor the

Internet for potential criminal activity, analyzing trends in the extreme

fringes of explicit content. And occasionally, even more disturbing patterns

arise…Three ex-cons have been murdered in Germany, Italy, and Scotland. The only

things they had in common were arrests for spamming—and a taste for unorthodox

entertainment. As the first officer on the scene of the most recent death, Liz

finds herself sucked into an international investigation that isn’t so much

asking who the killer is, but what—and if she doesn’t find the answer soon, the

homicides could go viral.