Pat Cadigan

Page Updated: 11/10/01

Pat Cadigan

Dervish is Digital

pbk 12 Oct 01

Mindplayers

Books By Pat Cadigan

About the Author

Bibliography

Paperback - Pan (2001)

Dervish is Digital
Detective Lieutenant Doré Konstantin is up against it… and she still can’t find the fabled out door.
Konstantin is Chief Officer in charge of TechnoCrime, Artificial Reality Division. In fact, she is the AR Division -unless you count her subordinates. Celestine and DiPietro. Most of the time, Konstantin doesn’t count them, so puts them on loan to auto crime. Now, as if handling her heavy case-load almost single-handed wasn’t enough, she’s got a stalker to deal with.
Hastings Dervish, who’s so rich he lives in the Key West enclave where all legal records are sealed and the local police are bought and sold, is the stalker. At least, that’s what Susannah Ell claims, and she should know. Two reasons: first, she’s the one being stalked; second, she used to be married to Dervish. Worse, Susannah says Dervish is a race traitor – to the human race. He’s swapped places with an ambitious AI, and now Dervish has all the processing power he needs to infiltrate every line of code in Susannah’s AR design studio. And what about the AI? It’s using Dervish’s body as a base to visit AR, hanging out in the gambling casinos of the Lowdown Hong Kong mound.
Which is where the guys form the East/West Precinct, a Japanese law-enforcement agency, come in. and specifically Goku, who often likes to go into AR in the persona of a nine-year-old kid. This really makes Konstantin unhappy but, if she’s going to get the goods on Hasting Dervish, she’ll have to deal with Goku.
‘A character that readers will undoubtedly hope to see more of in the future’ Salon
‘Locations dazzle, sleights of hand abound’ Guardian

Paperback - Gollancz (2000)

Mindplayers
Allie Haas only did it for a dare - the kind of dare that you know is a mistake but you do it anyway because it's Mistake time. But putting on the madcap that jerry Wirerammer had 'borrowed' was a very big mistake. The psychosis itself was quite conventional, a few paranoid delusions, but it didn't go away when she took the madcap off. Jerry did the decent thing and left her at an emergency room for dry-cleaning but then, of course, the Brain Police took over.
Straightened out by a professional mindplayer, Allie thinks she's left mind games behind for good but then comes the fazer. She can either go to jail as a mind criminal, for being crazy without a licence, or she can train as a mindplayer herself.
Pat Cadigan's intelligent and compelling foray into a near-future where you can score a little paranoia from the local neurosis peddler, or even trade your personality in for another, is, like Roger Zelazny's The Dream Master, a brilliant exploration of the nature of the mind itself.
’Has a bite like a silk piranha’ Bruce Sterling
'What a terrific book. Mindplayers is a gripping tale, tough and compassionate' Michael Swanwick

About The Author
Pat Cadigan was born in 1953 in Schenectady, New York and grew up in Massachusetts, attending the University of Massachusetts. She began publishing with ‘Death from Exposure’ in 1978 in Shayol, which she edited throughout its existence (1977-1985). Her other books include Synners, Fools (both of which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award) and Patterns. She moved to England in 1996 and lives in North London.
Pat Cadigan first introduced us to Doré Konstantin in Tea For An Empty Cup, which Salon magazine called a `tightly plotted, crisply written novel that fits the classic noir mystery template set down by the likes of Raymond Chandler more comfortably than anything William Gibson has ever written’. If you felt the way Salon did about Konstantin’s first time out, you’re going to love her second case. Fast, funny, packed with brilliant ideas, it’s how crime investigations are going to be the day after tomorrow.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Dervish is Digital (Macmillan, 2000) Pan Pbk Oct 01 (Dore Konstantin)

Tea from an Empty Cup (Dore Konstantin)

Synners

Mindplayers Gollancz Pbk Sep 00