Game Girl
a dark, dry-humoured techno-thriller
by Clifford Mailou

‘If you have to strip off in the same room as two attractive young women, the question is should you go first, wait for them, do it simultaneously or offer a choice? It was an interesting conundrum, and one I might have been able to solve if I hadn’t been bullied into a fifth option, i.e. they undress you!’

Crosston Orion Gathercole is a self-proclaimed "mundane." Antisocial, underachieving, and deeply cynical, his pedestrian life in commuter-land UK consists of a lonely flat, a puritanical, wife-abusing landlord, and a pathological hatred of authority. His only real escape is the internet. But a casual, late-night email changes everything when he accepts a tantalising, random invitation to join an intriguing online game from a user known only as Game Girl.

However, this is no game. It is an insidious trap.

Instantly, this utterly ordinary, unsuspecting soul is dragged into a dark underworld of sick perversion, brutal crimes and macabre rituals invariably filmed by a sinister group, the Watchers, all for the benefit of obscenely rich clients.
Triggered by a series of bizarre events, a corrupted computer file, and a horrific murder, Crosston allies with his landlord’s long-suffering wife in an attempt to identify Game Girl. Steered across the globe to San Francisco, they meet a ragtag resistance group dedicated to destroying Game Girl's legacy, and from the streets of San Francisco to the shores of Hawaii together they vow to end her global vendetta.
Does a nondescript, self-identifying ‘drone’ have what it takes to stem a global tide of tragedy or will Game Girl’s psychotic vendetta claim him as her next victim?