Virtual Strangers - Sam Canning

Did you ever want to cast off, to sail into the sunset with someone you just met, a kindred spirit, a twin soul, leaving everything behind? It is possible in the virtual social world of the Internet, which can become a comfort zone you'll never want to leave. You might, one day, want to meet that person with whom you have become strangely intimate. But reality is never as lovely as the dream. Be careful what you wish for.

A man and a woman - Seabee and Annika - hook up on a wannabe authors' site where they flirt, banter and play around. Just like you and me and everyone else these days. Don't we all spend part of our day on the Internet? On a forum, a blog, Twitter or Face Book. It's all innocent fun, isn't it? But for Annika and Seabee it became a chilly reality. After having joked around openly about killing off their significant others, both their partners actually do die in what seems to be unrelated freak accidents – or are they? The dark realisation begins to dawn on the uneasy duo that their murderous joke fantasy has become all too dangerously real and that the deaths were no random accidents. Someone is watching them.

Seabee and Annika find out in a hurry that cyberspace makes strange bedfellows and, if it's not he or she who did it, then who has done the killings? The two team up to find out who has hijacked their fantasy and turned it into a frightening nightmare.

Join the endearingly mismatched would-be detective duo Annika and Seabee as they investigate the deadly mystery of how the seemingly innocent cybernetic world of two virtual strangers was hi-jacked and transformed by an unknown faceless killer into real-life hell, where "homicide" isn't just a word highlighted harmlessly on a computer screen.

With more than a passing nod at the classic 'Strangers on a Train', Virtual Strangers is a darkly humorous, romantically witty-edged adventure that will take you into the deep, dark and sometimes deadly uncharted wilderness which lurks beyond the fringes of the strange and unpredictable netherworld that we casually call.CYBERSPACE.

Don't read it if you don't want to be jolted out of your comfort zone. Keep the lights on, change your password, use a pseudonym and never, ever give out personal information on the Internet.

Contains strong language