"Have you lost your mind? They'll kill you. Are you willing to literally bet your life on—"

"On my own technical expertise? Yes. Always."

It was supposed to be just another software job. It wasn't supposed to involve dodging bullets, igniting explosions, out-driving hit men, or bluffing his way through the dens of international crime lords. Danny's big brain has always served him well at a workstation or a soldering bench, but will he be smart enough to survive the engineering challenge of a lifetime?

Danny, a onetime computer whiz-kid now in his late 30s, is still lamenting his latest dot-com failure when tech investor Jason Tuttle offers him a special assignment: hack into Tungsten Medical Technologies and steal their pharmaceutical research.

At first, Danny and his team of semi-competent geeks relish the chance to play-act as cyber-criminals, but they soon discover they aren't the only ones interested in the secretive biotechnology firm. Their ill-timed computer shenanigans interrupt an armed break-in of the laboratory by the Russian mafia, and Danny lands squarely in the crosshairs of a local cocaine kingpin. He soon finds himself hunted by drug dealers and exploited by Machiavellian corporate moguls in a battle over a test tube of genetically engineered bacteria.

With the help of Tina, an amateur microbiologist desperate for professional recognition, Danny must use his technical skills to elude his powerful pursuers - and, with luck, maybe even beat them at their own game.

Dopamine is a present-day cyberpunk novel - and a celebration of the fact that such a thing as "a present-day cyberpunk novel" is even possible. Featuring some of the most accurate and accessible depictions of computer hacking and biotechnology ever to appear in a work of fiction, Dopamine is a wild ride for anyone who marvels at knowing that the real world we live in today was once strictly the realm of far-fetched fantasy.