A dystopian novel, “The Codex File” is frighteningly close to home. Protagonist Michael Robertson is in a cat and mouse game with Vincent Trevellion with a trail of tortured, dead bodies in their wake. If you can stomach the sadistic violence, the cyber-thrilling Orwellian theme will scare the bejesus out of you. Trevellion will stop at nothing to block access to the internet, in favor of the controlled UKCitizensNet. Conspiracies and manipulation are de rigueur: “brainwashing by saturation of misinformation . . . the distinction between information and misinformation soon becomes blurred.” The scope of manipulated dissemination of information is, at the very least, thought provoking, and at the most, actually occurring right now! Etherton is a genius at going back and forth in time, and twisting and turning without confusion. The surprises got me EVERY time. The end felt like it was in the middle of a caper — a tease for another book, surely, but a wrap of any kind would have been better.