If you’ve ever felt that the internet is a strange, hostile domain filled with untold hazards for the unwary, then Basilisk (Titan £9.99) is the book for you. Or maybe, unless you want your worst fears confirmed, not.
In Matt Wixey’s sophisticated, byzantine debut we meet Alex Webster who, along with her fellow ethical hacker Jay, becomes fascinated with an online game, a series of baffling puzzles set by an entity known as The Helmsman. The pair soon come to understand that anyone who succeeds in solving these conundrums goes mad and ends up committing suicide or murder.
The Helmsman has devised a “cognitive weapon”, a deadly mind virus buried in programming code. To make matters worse, Alex and Jay are also being menaced by nightmarishly grinning, impeccably polite strangers, pawns of an organisation whose name is redacted throughout the book, replaced with a solid black bar.