Signal to Noise - Hardcover

Sinclair, Carla

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062515330 ISBN 13: 9780062515339

Publisher: Harper San Francisco, 1997

Synopsis

Jim Knight, a features editor at Signal magazine, and Kat Astura, an intern, must flee for their lives when Kat accidentally loses $50,000 of Jim Knight's money to a virtual blackjack game run by organized crime

About this title

Review:

Quirky characters, quirky plotting, and a quirky voice make for a hip, funny, and highly satirical thriller. An egotistical editor of the latest, coolest cybermag finds himself running for his life with a magazine intern after she totes up big losses on his account in an online gambling scam. She thinks it's just a game. The mobsters behind the site think otherwise and they want their 200 grand. Although it's an unlikely romance and there's plenty to go wrong in off-beat ways, Sinclair, author of Net Chick: A Smart Girl Guide to the Wired World, keeps you turning the pages of her first novel as she builds the suspense while gibbing the all-too-self-serious denizens of the cyberculture world.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A mildly atmospheric snapshot of San Francisco's techno- publishing scene goes downhill fast when it devolves into a breathless kidnapping/romance. Jim Knight is talented, driven, and terminally stodgy: As the features editor of Signal magazine, he's scornful of interns and a slave to his e-mail. One fateful night when his relentlessly upwardly mobile fianc‚e is out of town, he goes to a scruffy party in hopes of hooking up with a famous novelist whom he wants a favor from. By a complicated chain of events, he ends up back at his own place with a pack of fun-seekers (not his usual gang), which includes 24-year-old Kat, aspiring writer and `zine intern, who's terminally insecure, attractive, and smart. Many drinks later, Jim is off feeling sick somewhere when Kat idly uses his computer to log onto a gambling website, where she proceeds to rack up almost $200,000 in debt. Jim wakes up the next morning tormented by a wicked hangover and baffled by threatening e-mail from the ``casino manager.'' Having little memory of the previous night, he pursues Kat, who shows up at his gig (he's also a jazz musician) the following night, glimpses his artist side--and falls for him. Then some shady characters start chasing the two; Kat's apartment building burns down; Jim finds himself increasingly on the outs at work and with his fianc‚e; and finally, he and Kat are kidnapped by emissaries of the casino, who drive them to a trailer park where they're held captive by an unsavory bunch. Various tepid adventures and quasi-escapes later, Kat's ingenuity springs the pair--though both must change and grow before they can resume their romance. First-novelist/cyber-celeb Sinclair (the nonfiction Net Chick, not reviewed) is engaging when she's sketching the clothes, lunch hangouts, and familiar ambitions of this self-consciously cutting- edge scene. It's the desperate criminals and the heated flirting that induce boredom. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper San Francisco
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0062515330
• ISBN 13: 9780062515339
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 294