Die the Villain - C. P. Serret

2011. Two years before Snowden.

Hiding in plain sight as a consultant in the gig economy, Finn trades in information. He returned from Japan last year, a 23-year-old Darknet impresario with Yakuza ties, ink, and an MBA from a prominent university.

alias: APHID GRIN

Finn hooks up with Chloë, a fashionable grad-school dropout, uptown. She draws him into a social scene he's only glimpsed from the college-bar sidelines, rubbing elbows with the City's élite; but when a foiled heist leaves him scrambling for cover, he loses himself within his rising celebrity as 'Gigi', young society's latest It-girl, unsure of the way back... or a way out.

C. P. Serret presents a roman noir, post-postmodernité, of an individual struggle with alienation, anomie, and authenticity; of cybercrime gone wrong and a roller-coaster crash with the rich kids of Instagram-an off-the-rails carnivalised plunge 'ablaze with... sinister lies, syndicates, and traumatic upheavals' (Willow Greymoor, San Francisco Book Review).