Living at opposite ends of new media's hierarchy, Jim Knight -- features editor of the ultra-cool Signal Magazine -- and Kat Astura -- unpaid 'zine drudge -- are tossed together when Kat, mouse-clicking her way into trouble, blows $200,000 of Jim's money in a virtual blackjack game backed by all-too-real thugs. Kidnapped to the hinterlands by Way New mobsters, Jim and Kat race through the electronic byways of the San Francisco multimedia ghetto and the sandblasted Southwestern desert in a run for their money and their lives. An eclectic melange of social satire, offbeat romance, and suspenseful whodunit, Signal to Noise is both a page-turning thriller and a quirky, hilarious satire of our intoxication with new technology and its toys.