Count Zero

Bobby Newmark, the self-styled 'Count Zero' is just getting started as a hacker, and is still an amateur. There comes a day when he is asked to test some new tech for some of his shadier connections. The tech nearly kills him, and he only survives due to the appearance of a shining girl who unhooks him from the net before his heart stops beating... Turner is a corporate mercenary, and he has been hired to help Mitchell leave his current employ in a most illegal fashion. Unfortunately Turner misses his mark, and ends up with the old guy's daughter, Angie instead. Seems Angie is not all she appears to be, though . . . Marly Krushkova Was a gallery owner until she tried to sell a counterfeit. Now she is infamous, and her infamy brings her to Josef Virek, industrialist and art patron, who seeks the author of several futuristic Joseph Cornell type artworks - much like the one that cost her a job. But Virek is after more than just art, and he means to find what he seeks, regardless of cost, or care... The second of the 'Sprawl' trilogy, and the second of William Gibson's books on this list, this counts as a classic of the genre. The world is rich and colourful - sometimes a bit too much so, in that it leaves you a bit confused now and then as to why that particular part of the background scenery is so important, or how this dystopian vision of a scene actually relates to our characters. We see the return (sort of) of Wintermute and Neuromancer - disguised as voodoo gods, but otherwise a new cast of characters. More points of view from which to examine the weirdly wonderful world Mr Gibson has created...