Come and Find Me-Hallie Ephron

Come and Find Me
Hallie Ephron
Morrow, Mar 22 2011, $24.99
ISBN: 9780061857522

Two years ago altruistic idealistic hacker Daniel Banks died in a mountain climbing accident on Eiger. His widow Diana and their best friend Jake opened up a computer security firm. However, she has not been able to move on as she suffers panic attacks when attempting to navigate the real world. Instead Diana prefers limited contact via Otherworld a virtual website where her avatar is Nadia; her only consistent live in person human contact is her hypochondriac sister Ashley.

While visiting Diana, Ashley decides to attend an event in which her older sister was invited, but will not go. Ashley vanishes. Diana begins a quest to find her sibling via the virtual world and drugged to the max in the real mean streets as anxiety rips her stomach and panic attacks never cease.

Mindful of Sigourney Weaver’s character Helen Hudson in Copy Cat, Diana is an intriguing lead character as she suffers from agoraphobia but knows she must venture outside if she is to rescue her sister. Although the key element that she concludes is the cause of her condition is that she allowed her self to become Ms. Daniel so when he died her identity died too; however this fails to gel as this feels more like babble rather than a defense mechanism. Still readers will enjoy her tenuous efforts as she begins to believe Daniel was right that the government-industrial-financial complex controls cyberspace where the latest official shutdown is in Madison.

Harriet Klausner