Overview

'This isn't some kind of 'dear John' letter. I'm coming back again' But Amy Sinclair didn't come back. That note on the kitchen table was the last that her boyfriend, Jason, heard of her. At first, he had let her have her space but as the weeks turned to months the worries had set in... and eventually he went after her. What he found appalled him. It seems that Amy had had a secret life on the internet and had met some people she shouldn't have. And one of them took her. Now Jason sits at home and cruises the same horrific websites that she once walked through to find her kidnapper. But when he lays a trap for a monster that he meets in a chat-room he gets more than he bargained for. He finds that nothing in this story is as it seems and that the clues lie in the mistakes of his own past...

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9780752860060

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Reviews

'The most extraordinary first novel I've read for a while ... I won't waste time trying to give you an outline of this indescribable near future satire, detective story and psychological horror. I'll just say that writing of this quality and orginality doesn't come along very often.' -- Mat Coward MORNING STAR 'A thrilling good read.Adult in tone and content, it deals with lost love, the darker corners of the unmonitored web, the journey into despair of a man seking answers and the latent power of the written word ... a unique psychological read.' IMPACT MAGAZINE 'Debut novelist Mosby has packed a complex, sometimes bewildering plot with brilliant ideas. His book is fiercely orginal, truly intriguing. This is speculative fiction at its reckless best.' -- Philip Oakes LITERARY REVIEW ' A cracking futuristic thriller.' IRISH EXAMINER

Debut British thriller whose originality turns on infinitudes of computer surrealism. Cybersex in private chat rooms leads to ever-stronger pages and, about halfway through, to a long walk through Weirdsville. Jason has been happy with roommate Amy Sinclair, 24, whom he married without benefit of clergy. But Amy's crying jags during sex, while in abeyance for the past year, now erupt more often. Self-absorbed Jason gets into cybersex with Claire Warner in the Internet's Melanie Room, and when Amy departs, leaving a note saying she'll return, Jason blames himself. After four months, he's certain she's been raped and murdered, as indeed so has Claire. Jason finds some rape sites on the Internet and, making up the screen name Amy17, baits a hook for the rapist, Kareem. Jason knows the woodland jogging ritual of a girl named Charlie and suckers Kareem into attacking her. But Charlie knows martial arts, creams Kareem, and, after a chase, Jason kills him for not revealing Amy's whereabouts. Within a day, Jason has killed two more men and now has three deaths on his hands. Meanwhile, his childhood hacker buddy Graham, unhappily married to Helen, helps Jason break into a secret cyber file that puts Jason on the trail leading to those second and third deaths. But this secret file has some kind of supervirus attached to it that knocks out half the servers in America and is on its way to destroying the Internet. Jason's tracking leads him to Dennison, a nut who believes words are as alive as cells or animals and who has saved a gigantic library of lost words and works he downloads from the Internet, echoing Jorge Luis Borges's story The Library of Babel. From this point on, the story repeats many of its own passages and sweeps off into a crazed whirlwind of gutsy plotting. Fearless! But we never did decipher the title. (Kirkus Reviews)

Amy Foster is bubbly, pretty and the sexiest thing on two legs. What's more she adores Jason and they are ecstatically happy. But recently things haven't been quite so good - and Amy has gone, leaving a note on the kitchen table. She needs to get her head straight and wants a bit of space to sort herself out. Despite his hurt, Jason resists the temptation to look for her - but as the months go by, he starts searching, and in doing so turns over some stones with some very unpleasant things wriggling underneath. Jason finds himself plunged into a nightmare world of cybersex, internet rape, and snuff movies, a world where his beautiful Amy had spent hours surfing the most appalling sites, before meeting up with the man who would lure her away. Deeply disturbing, The Third Person is set in a futuristic world where the written word has the power to corrupt and the abuse of the human body is fodder for anyone who wants to view it online. It is dark, bleak and profoundly sad; the violence is sickening, but even more distressing is the gradual descent of Jason into his own living hell, as he turns from a desperate man into a mindless killer. Mosby gives us a bleak vision of the future, but the torments Jason suffers are the age old ones of betrayal and the loss of love. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

This is Steve Mosby's debut novel, though he has been writing for some years. He lives in Leeds.

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