Inevitably, with William Gibson’s name on the cover, I found Spook Country in the SF section of my local Waterstones, but it’s really more of a techno thriller, except written more in the style of the espionage genre: low key, lots of inner voice, and the playing out of a game rather than the sense of an against-the-clock struggle. At least three genres in this hybrid then, not to mention William Gibson’s status (according to Amazon) as a “cult” writer.

There are three narrative threads here, which eventually converge for the climax. One narrative point of view is that of Hollis Henry, a musician-turned-writer who is trying to make a start on a career in journalism after losing most of the money she made as a member of a Pixies-like cult indie band on unlucky ventures. She’s taken an assignment for a mysterious startup magazine and soon finds herself lost in the kind of radical ambiguity characteristic of espionage. But what kind of espionage? Official? Unofficial? Industrial?

Another point of view is that of Tito, a young man in New York City who belongs to some kind of crime (or is it?) syndicate. He’s from Cuba, but his family is ethnically Chinese, except they speak Russian. Or Spanish. Or speak Spanish but text in Russian. Except its with the Roman alphabet, so they’re texting in an approximation of Russian. Tito is some kind of runner, dropping off iPods full of data for an old man, and escaping – when he needs to – with the urban acrobatics of freerunning.

He’s being watched by some kind of black ops agent called Brown, who may or may not have any official status, but who has kidnapped from the street a Russian-speaking tranquilizer junkie called Milgrim (rhymes with Pilgrim), who is our bewildered third point of view. Milgrim’s primary concern is always his next pill, but he’s also a survivor and an opportunist.

None of those providing a narrative point of view really knows what is going on, and they all go along for the ride for their own reasons, permanently confused and trying to make sense of the unfolding events, or looking for a moment of clarity. The techno- part of the techno-thriller concerns iPods, cobbled-together VR headsets, GPS chips, encrypted cell phones and container ships. Unlike other techno thriller writers, and probably because of his experience in SF, Gibson creates a timeless technological backdrop, any of which is possible now and not at all futuristic, but none of which can be particularly pinned down to a time or place. So there are no “amazingly fast” quad speed CDROM drives, just the taken-for-granted quotidian stuff we’re surrounded with all the time.

The most engaging of the narrative points of view, for me, is Hollis, the female singer from a defunct rock band. One member of the band is dead, another (like Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground) seems to have settled for suburban domesticity, while the lead guitarist – called Inchmale – is married and living in Buenos Aires. For Hollis, Inchmale is like a missing limb, not because of any romantic attachment, but because they were even closer: bandmates, creative partners, the Lennon-McCartney of Hollis’ band The Curfew.

Hollis starts of in LA, meeting with some artists who are using GPS data to create virtual art installations. But she’s uncomfortable with her assignment, not sure who she’s working for, and keeps encountering strange coincidences, or the feeling that she’s under surveillance. As her sense of paranoia grows, she gets sucked further into a mysterious world of semi-official espionage and shipping containers that seem to endlessly circle the world. (This shipping container idea reminds me of Don Delillo’s waste ship in his novel Underworld.)

I enjoyed this. It’s paced like a Le Carré-style espionage novel, but immersed in a recognisable technological world with some sense of morality eventually seeping through all the grey areas. Recommended.