Overview

In a world where virtual addiction kills, Kennedy Stark is paid to pull the plug. A professional halter--part detective, part counselor--he trawls the world's darkest surrogate-reality feeds in search of the lost. When he isn't working, he's dreaming of a one-way ticket to Mars, where a new colony has been established as a hopeful alternative to an Earth in the early stages of climate collapse. One evening, after a botched rescue attempt, a mysterious client offers Kennedy a tantalizing new case: brilliant software engineer Delia Walsh, who Kennedy fell in love with years ago, has disappeared inside a surrogate reality project called The Forum. Entering under an assumed identity, Kennedy finds a simulation unlike any other. The Forum bills itself as a tool for cutting-edge scientific research and radical philosophical investigations, but the signs of its corruption are everywhere. As Kennedy investigates, he learns Delia had been working on a new simulation that could upend The Forum's primary purpose, and that even in this prurient playground for the super wealthy, the dangers are very real. Brimming with black humor, hardboiled attitude, and a cast of endearing misfits lost in brittle fantasies, The Halter introduces a charismatic detective and heralds a unique and assured new voice in sci-fi crime.

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Darby McDevitt is a writer and game developer best known for his work on the Assassin's Creed series of video games. He served as lead writer for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and as narrative director for Assassin's Creed: Codename Hexe. His short fiction has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Jeopardy, Griffel, and In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing. McDevitt is a dual citizen of the US and Canada and lives in Montreal. Paul Bellantoni, a classically trained actor, is a former opera singer in the US and Europe. He voiced all the fight efforts for Wenwu in the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and made his animated feature debut in the Annie Award-nominated Ruben Brandt, Collector. Thrilled to be narrating audiobooks, he excels in character voices, accents, and captivating passionate storytelling. He was the singing voice for the Cowardly Lion of Oz ornament from Hallmark, and is the voice for Uatu, The Watcher in the Marvel Super War videogame. He has voiced lead characters in the English versions of several Netflix and Hulu series, and has appeared in many videogame franchises, including Dungeons & Dragons, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Black Desert, Genshin Impact, and Shenmue. He sang lead roles in opera companies throughout the US and Europe for over a decade, appears on the cast recording of ""The Ballad of Baby Doe"" with Central City Opera, as well as a solo CD of arias ""Heroes & Villains"" with the Moravian Symphony. He made his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall as a winner of the Koussevitzky Prize.

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