Reset: The Dowland Cases - One by Kirk Dougal

5 of 5 Stars     Review copy

Richard Jefferson Dowland, Jr., 39. Divorced, no children. Goes by Rick but a whole generation of people know him as RJ. Graduated from UCLA with an undergrad in Computer Science at the age of twenty. Co-inventor of the first fully-immersed computer game, The Kindred. He personally registered twenty-nine patents related to computer- human interfaces and games. 

Rick is now retired from the gaming industry and finds himself working homicide.  When a serial killer starts killing immersive gamers his boss and the FBI ask him to go back in and become a deep sleeper again.  Something he swore he'd never do.  It's an addiction, a habit he managed to kick once and has no desire to revisit.

Deep sleepers, the guys that stay inside for weeks or months, they pay someone to take care of their body while they are buried inside. Gamers call them peepers, or peeps for short.

For a reader, Reset: The Dowland Cases - One provides instant gratification.  The in-game action was fast paced and believable.  The story itself was as immersive as a good video game. With Rick having to go into more than one game it gave the author a chance to experiment with various writing styles in the same novel, including crime noir in the game called The City.

Examples...

The plug-in air freshener tried but there wasn’t enough potpourri in the world to cover up the smell rising from the body on the bed.

I took a drink of the gin and wondered immediately if the bathtub had been clean when it was made. 

The canary on the mic had a color of blonde hair not found in nature and a dress slit almost high enough to see Cleveland. A few flat notes into the next song and I understood why the dress needed to be so distracting.

She stood close enough for me to hear the whisper of her blouse against skin as she breathed. Her perfume wafted into my nose and threatened to cloud my thinking.

So much fun.  Of course there are many red herrings along the way, but in the end it all makes perfect sense and the set up is there for book two in the series.  In the end Reset: The Dowland Cases - One is a tale that left me wanting more in the best possible way.  Highly recommended.

Reset: The Dowland Cases - One is available for the Kindle.   If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited you can read it at no additional charge.  Also, if you are an Amazon Prime member you can read it for FREE using the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

From the author's bio - Kirk Dougal has had fiction works appear in multiple anthologies and released his debut novel, Dreams of Ivory and Gold, in May of 2014.  His YA dystopian novel, Jacked, was published in 2016.  He's currently at work completing the sequel to Dreams, Valleys of the Earth.

Kirk is currently working in a corporate position with a group of newspapers after serving as a group publisher and editor-in-chief. He lives in Ohio with his wife and four children.