Signal to Noise, Carla Sinclair, Harper Edge, 1997
Set in present-day San Francisco, this is the story of Jim Knight, stressed-out features editor at Signal, the extremely hip multimedia magazine. One night, baecause his car is in the shop, he gets a ride home from a bunch of interns at a zine in the same building as Signal. One of them, Kat Astura, accidentally finds a gambling web site on Jim's system called El Tropical. Thinking that it's not for real, she racks up what she thinks is a $200,000 virtual debt. Little do either of them know, but the debt is real, and the mob, the owners of the web site, come around looking for the money now.
The two are kidnapped and taken to El Tropical's headquarters, a trailer park outside of Reno, by a rather motley group of gangsters. Meantime, plans are made to get the money from Jim and Kat, money which neither of them has, by any means necessary.
This is a really good novel of contemporary San Francisco multimedia culture written by someone who has been there; it's a pretty good suspense novel, too.
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