The White Tower

"Jumpers," McCallum was saying. "Jumpers are - well, in my experience jumpers are always badly disturbed. They choose to jump because it's so violent." Niall Howley has been spending night after night playing an interactive computer game when he's found dead at the bottom of the Telstra tower in Canberra. From a graphic left on his computer, it is apparent that his actual death mimics in an eerie way the death already scripted for him in the game. The police and the coroner call it suicide, but Niall's mother hires Sandra Mahoney, computer crime consultant, to help her understand what has really happened. This is the second book in Dorothy Johnston's crime series following "The Trojan Dog", which was joint winner of the 2001 ACT Book of the Year and won the "Age" Best of 2000 in the Crime section. Johnston's "One For The Master" (Wakefield Press 1997) and "Ruth" (1986) were short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award. "If you combined the two strands of Ruth Rendell and her alter writing ego, Barbara Vine, you'd come close to Dorothy Johnston's talent." - Ken Bruen, author of "The Guards"