Bridge Trilogy

NEW YORK TIMES bestseller 2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty...

San Francisco in the nearish future. Ex-cop Berry Rydell's lost one job he didn't much like and landed another he likes even less. Some sunglasses—actually high-end kit infused with super-sensitive data—were stolen from a courier, and a man named Warbaby's been charged with retrieving them. And Warbaby needs Rydell's help. But, with SFPD Homicide involved, an abandoned bridge populated by freaks and misfits, and some weirdness involving the Republic of Desire and a 'Death Star', it's turning out to be a very strange and dangerous scene indeed . . .

After an attack of scruples, Colin Laney's skipped out on his former employer Slitscan—avoiding the rash of media lawyers sent his way—and taken a job for the outfit managing Japanese rock duo, Lo/Rez. Rez has announced he's going to marry an "idoru" by the name of Rei Toi—she exists only in virtual reality—and this creates complications that Laney, a net runner, is supposed to sort out.

Rydell is on his way back to near-future San Francisco. His job has him convinced that his career is going nowhere, but his friend Laney, phoning from Tokyo, says there's more interesting work for him in Northern California. And there is, although it will eventually involve his former girlfriend, a Taoist assassin, the secrets Laney has been hacking out of the depths of DatAmerica, the CEO of the PR firm that secretly runs the world and the apocalyptic technological transformation of, well, everything.