I got this paperback from Better World Books. It's set in a not-that-distant-future where the world has suffered a global pandemic - yeah, that part reads rather differently now than when the book was written, I imagine. Anyway, the virus had a horrifying effect on a percentage of its victims: it left them in a "locked in" state, aware of everything around them but unable to move or respond in any way. Technology has been developed to help these people: android bodies that the victims can connect with and use as external "selves", with the better models allowing them to interact with the world very much as usual. And there are a few people who have the ability to let a locked-in person borrow their own bodies directly, without needing the androids or any special connections - which leads to a very strange subculture where people aren't necessarily who they seem to be.

Cue our hero, an FBI agent who's a locked-in victim, his body cared for in a room in his family home while his android form (these are commonly referred to as "threeps"; you can probably guess the origin of that) lets him move about and communicate - and detect. But there are political undercurrents surrounding the entire situation, and threatening the virtual lives of the locked-in folk, with some people apparently willing to kill to get what they want.

I've enjoyed other works by Scalzi, including The Dispatcher, in which he comes up with a very specific premise and then plays with the ways in which the world might change as a result of such a thing. This book takes a more scientific turn for the most part, with lots of delightfully tricksy bits having to do with the technology, the issues of "polyproprioception" (having more than one body to worry about), the nature of the "integrators" (the ones who can lend out their bodies at will), the socio-economics of all this, even some debates between the locked-in people who've built a new virtual world that they do not want to lose, even if a cure would let them use their own bodies again... Lively and often funny mix of detective story, buddy-cop situation, and medical-SF.

[There's a TV Tropes page on the book, with some entertaining tidbits.]

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book, bagged against the elements, on a guardrail at the riverside end of Station Rd while in the area doing some geocaching. Hope someone enjoys the book!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2021 Science Fiction challenge. ***

It was fun to find this book! Thank you!

Re-release on a beautiful day!