The Great Firewall--Shanghai wired!

May 2, 2012 - PRLog -- Contact:   Michael C. Boxall
      Michael@thegreatfirewall.com
      778 836 1161

May 2012, Vancouver BC—With news breaking of a top Chinese politician linked to the death of a Western businessman, Michael C. Boxall’s thriller The Great Firewall could not be more timely. It tells how software entrepreneur Daniel Skye—dubbed “Orson Welles with a laptop” by Wired magazine—helps protesters battle Wenming Nan, a murderous property developer who is driving them out of their homes. Nan is immensely wealthy and privy to China’s web of surveillance, and when Daniel passes on a damaging message he makes an enemy whose power knows no limits.

“China’s rulers have always spied on their own people,” Boxall says. “Now, as the technology of surveillance becomes more sophisticated, it overshadows every aspect of life. And when the information gets passed to members of  the new oligarchy it makes them even stronger. Daniel finds himself caught in a struggle between a rich man  bent on getting richer and the people he is destroying in the process. It’s an old story made new by the way they fight and the place they fight over—Shanghai, which  is again becoming the most exciting city in the world.”

Fast-paced and multi-layered, The Great Firewall is a thriller for our times. Its setting will appeal to readers of Charles Cumming and Neal Stephenson, while the plotting and suspense evoke such classics of the genre as The Eye of the Needle.  In the words of one Amazon reviewer of the Kindle edition, “It is thoroughly modern, even futuristic in concept, yet beautifully written in the time-honored manner of fine fiction.”

North Vancouver resident Boxall is a magazine journalist with a decade’s experience of working in Asia. He was one of two joint winners of the first $25,000 Lupton New Voices in Literature award, presented at Book Expo America. The Great Firewall will be followed by a second thriller, Final Cut, which is set against the background of increasing Chinese espionage in North America.

The Great Firewall, ISBN 475154240, is available from Amazon.com.

For more information and a review copy call 778 836 1161 or e-mail michael@thegreatfirewall.com