opening lines:
There is no escaping Route 128 in the electronics settlements that encircle Boston.

In 1981 IBM launched the PC. Over the next couple of years, Hollywood enjoyed a flirtation with computers in movies like Tron and War Games, before losing interest in the subject. And around the same time John McNeill gave us this nice little shocker about the evil that computers could be doing to your children without you knowing. It's a great paranoid scare story set in the new technology parks of New England, bouncing echoes off the Salem witch-trials, and it's not a bad thriller as well. Who's poisoning our children's minds: the forces of capitalism or communism? How closely involved are the FBI? The KGB? And what does any of it have to do with the Tunguska explosion of 1908?

In fact, this book has little in common with either Tron or War Games, but does have some parallels with Halloween III: The Season of the Witch (that was the weird one that didn't fit in with the rest of the series) and, going further back, with the red-baiting 1950s movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And it's none the worse for any of that, of course. There are strands of childhood-ain't-what-it-used-to-be and echoes of possessed-child post-Exorcist horror, but mostly it's a deranged and delightful conspiracy theory that gave me not inconsiderable pleasure.

It also contains this rather nice word game, as an ex-cop reflects on his days in the force:

Years ago, with their legs up at the precinct house, the detectives had played a game: describe a suspect in a single word, so accurately that a smart cop could pick him out of a line-up. And before they even spoke, Sorenson had precisely the word for Hendricks. Dapper. (p.111)

I'm not too sure about cops doing this, but it's an intriguing challenge: try it and have some fun, kids.

John McNeill had earlier written novels about computer crime - The Consultant (1979) - and the Cold War in Spy Game (1980). I haven't read either, I'm afraid. Sorry 'bout that.