Darby McDevitt (Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag) debuts a sci-fi novel about virtual addiction, climate collapse, and a woman lost inside a seductive metaverse.
NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES, February 25, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — THE HALTER (Diversion Books; February 17, 2026; Paperback; $18.99) marks the electrifying debut novel of Darby McDevitt, Narrative Director of the blockbuster Assassin’s Creed franchise. After shaping immersive worlds for more than 25 acclaimed games—two of which have sold over 25 million copies worldwide—McDevitt turns his mastery of interactive storytelling to a high-stakes cyber-noir thriller that interrogates our culture’s obsession with escapism and the unintended consequences of technological desire.
Blending speculative imagination with hardboiled grit, THE HALTER fuses the paranoid inventiveness of Philip K. Dick, the melancholy noir of Raymond Chandler, and the immersive virtual landscapes familiar to fans of READY PLAYER ONE and TITANIUM NOIR. The result is a stylish, propulsive thriller that is as unsettling as it is entertaining.
In a near-future world buckling under climate collapse and digital dependency, Kennedy Stark works as a “halter”—part private investigator, part counselor—hired to extract clients from immersive virtual realities that have become dangerously addictive. When users refuse to return to the physical world, halters step in to pull the plug. Haunted by dreams of escaping Earth for a Mars colony, Stark takes a case that cuts into his own past: Delia Walsh, a brilliant software engineer and the one that got away, has vanished inside a sprawling virtual project known as The Forum—a carnivalesque metaverse of endless “theaters,” each more seductive and perilous than the last. What begins as a missing-person search spirals into a conspiracy that threatens both the digital realm and the fragile society beyond it.
Though set in the near future, THE HALTER is noir at heart. Stark is a flawed, sharp-witted detective moving through a morally ambiguous world where corporations, technologists, and dreamers blur the line between salvation and self-delusion. With taut pacing, crackling dialogue, and immersive worldbuilding, Darby McDevitt delivers a cinematic thriller that examines the “desire line” of technology—how once unleashed, new tools rarely follow their creators’ intentions—and asks urgent questions about escapism, control, and the cost of disappearing into the worlds we build.
Darby McDevitt is best known for his work on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and as narrative director for Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe. With THE HALTER, he expands his storytelling beyond interactive media, bringing his signature blend of atmosphere, moral complexity, and narrative ambition to the novel form.
Darkly funny, emotionally resonant, and unnervingly plausible, THE HALTER is a cyber-noir thriller for readers who crave immersive worlds—and are brave enough to question the cost of living inside them.
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