Centred around Hollis Henry, a journalist and former rock star, William Gibson’s latest novel is a taut, fast-paced journey into the world of infinite wealth and espionage. Hired originally to write about “locative art,” a new virtual-reality art form still in its beta stage, Hollis finds herself involved in a high-stakes chase for a mysterious shipping container.

Fans of Pattern Recognition will be happy to see the return of Hubertus Bigend and his enigmatic company Blue Ant. Also along for the voyage are a Santerìa-worshipping martial artist, a junkie code breaker, various artists and hackers, and, of course, spooks.

The “spooks” in question are intelligence agents, though for much of the book it is unclear for whom they are gathering information. This is part of Spook Country’s charm. Gibson is in no rush to reveal motives or even what it is, exactly, that everyone is after. This allows the reader to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Though known as a futurist, Gibson now seems content with the current state of technology; like his previous book, Spook Country is set in the present day. Characters use Blackberries and PowerBooks. When the book does feature gadgets of Gibson’s own creation, like the prototype VR-glasses, they seem quite plausibly of today’s world.

Being a William Gibson book, Spook Country will undoubtedly be considered a science fiction novel, but it’s actually a pure page-turner that can be enjoyed by anyone, sci-fi fan or not.