However, the writer soon found it too limiting to be confined within any label: following the steampunk saga he created together with Bruce Sterling, "The Difference Engine," he released "The Bridge Trilogy"—a story about an alternative "today"—and then "The Blue Ant Trilogy," begun with the novel "Pattern Recognition," continued with "Ghost Country," and completed with "Zero History." Now Hollis Henry, familiar to readers from "Ghost Country"—a former rock vocalist turned journalist—finds herself again drawn into the orbit of Hubert Bigend, a visionary and advertising magnate. Bigend discovers that someone is using viral marketing in an even more sophisticated and effective way than he himself, and tasks Hollis with tracking down the mysterious creator of the secret brand "Gabriel Hounds" ("Gabriel’s Hounds")…