Written as the first in a series. In the very near future Julia Z -- a sort of hacker -- tries to locate a missing artist and ends up pulling on a thread that reaches into the darkest side of internet-enabled crime. It's a cross between a near future cyberpunk novel, crime thriller and mystery series genre. You'll have a better time if you read it as an entry in a series of well-researched crime thrillers. The style is rather direct and basic as mainstream thrillers tend to be. I found the mechanics of the artist's work questionable, but most other details were pretty convincing. Liu was a software developer and while he didn't focus too much on Julia's use of computers, what he showed was far better than what you usually get in these sort of stories or TV episodes. The bits about Julia's mother -- a Chinese immigrant -- really flesh out how Julia got to be the way she is, connecting her past to her current attitude and why she does what she does in the end. There's enough intriguing background sprinkled in to supply story lines for the next books if they come. The second half of the book gets pretty dark, but realistically so.