Digital Futures

A retro-styled private eye, a cyber-fluent secretary, and a trail of blood stretching from the rain-slicked streets of Victoria, BC, to the mountain fortresses of the Balkans.

Peter "PeePee" Iverson runs a private investigation agency in Victoria, British Columbia, with one foot planted firmly in a 1940s noir fantasy and the other on the solid, tech-saturated earth of the 2020s. Hes got the striped suit, the brown fedora, and a Penang lawyer walking stick for personal protection. He doesnt have much patience for the internet, but he does have Cath "CC" Cuttler—his spiky-haired, sharp-tongued secretary who navigates the lawless wild west of the dark web with effortless brilliance.

When a high-end appliance heist pulls the duo into the orbit of a brutally efficient Organized Retail Crime syndicate run by the elusive Peter Petrovich, the case takes an unexpected turn: the thieves have also made off with a half-million-dollar Group of Seven painting.

Meanwhile, across the Strait, a calculated shadow is falling over Richmonds tech elite. Three top executives at a multi-billion-dollar aerospace conglomerate are systematically targeted and executed in broad daylight by a surgical motorcycle hit squad.

Hired by a grieving Oak Bay widow to look into the final murder, PeePee and CC begin to suspect that these seemingly separate threads of high-volume corporate theft and cold-blooded contract killing are knotted together in a dark, matted jumble. As the official police investigations stall and go cold, its up to the eccentric PI and his digital savant sidekick to track down the data trail.

But when the law proves entirely powerless against the wealthy and the corrupt, PeePee and CC are faced with a terrifying moral dilemma. To deliver justice to the families left in the wake of the carnage, they must decide whether to step completely outside the rule of law—and trigger an explosive, extrajudicial blood feud halfway across the globe.

Richly atmospheric, dryly comedic, and fiercely clever, Digital Futures is a gripping Canadian noir thriller where ancient debts are written in digital currency, and vengeance is the only language left to speak.

70000 words