There's a lot of gloss, attitude and atmosphere to this essentially straightforward adventure tale imbued with the sensibilities of post 9/11 America.

From references to ultra-chic cultures like techno art, cult rock bands and designer hotels to the chain of history linking the Cold War to the war in Iraq, William Gibson plays on the tension of superficiality masking a world of danger and deceit.

He works in threes:

		"SPOOK COUNTRY" By William Gibson $25.95

Hollis Henry, lead singer of the defunct rocker band, Curfew, tries to make it as free-lance journalist; Cuban-born Tito and his cousins live underground in Manhattan working for "the Old Man;" Brown, some brand of secret agent, uses his hostage, the drug-addicted Milgrim, for his knowledge of Russian to spy on Tito's gang.

The "dingus" at the center of this triptych is a missing cargo container aboard a ship at sea. Slowly, Gibson maneuvers his triple players to a low-key denouement in Vancouver, where much is revealed.

The weakest and most stylish of the three segments is Henry's puzzling "job" for a freelance Web magazine, Node, which doesn't exist yet, or ever. Her celebrity status gets her the assignment -- profiling one Chombo, a "locative" artist, as described by Gibson.

Real name Bobby Ferguson, he's a GPS specialist who sets up the technology for re-creations of famous celebrity moments like the death of River Phoenix or F. Scott Fitzgerald's heart attack. It's complicated, a clever bit of invention by Gibson.

The viewer needs a special helmet to "see" the virtual reality of the moment at the very spot it occurred, pinpointed by Ferguson's tracking expertise.

His real job, though, is to track the cargo for the Old Man. Hollis is a sideshow.

"Spook Country" is very current. The Iraqi occupation and Homeland Security play key roles and a character speculates "that America had developed Stockholm syndrome toward its own government, post 9/11."

That speaker is Bigend, a Belgian advertising magnate who seems to know a little bit about a lot of things, including the cargo container. He pays for Henry's pursuit of Ferguson with vague intentions to turn her into a pop-culture journalist. At the same time, Bigend is arranging a multimillion-dollar ad deal with another ex-Curfew member.

Many disparate tracks here, with Gibson juggling them more frantically as the container reaches Vancouver and Henry is caught in the middle.

"The whole business had to play out initially in spook country and might well remain there for a very long time...," Gibson tells us.

And so will the readers.