A cyberpunk detective serial, read aloud by its author.
Andersson Dexter Investigations features M. Darusha Wehm reading a cyberpunk detective novel aloud in installments, including the book Pixels and Flesh. Its detective, Dex, stakes out a store, meets squad captains as an avatar and keeps asking whether his band rehearsals are fair to people who barely have enough to eat.
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Andersson Dexter Investigations is detective fiction delivered as a straight reading: M. Darusha Wehm, who wrote the novels, reads them aloud in numbered episodes. Each installment opens with a brief spoken credit and a chapter number before the prose picks up. The novel heard in the recent episodes is Pixels and Flesh, and one title in the run is 'Pixels and Flesh Episode 15 (Season Finale)'. Its detective is Dex, and his case is a series of attacks on storefronts belonging to Empire, a company whose businesses include Juicy Mart. The same pattern shows up in attacks across Europa, and in one chapter an analysis predicts when the next ones are likely to happen in Nice. The setting is split between the physical and the virtual. In one chapter Dex is folded into a break room barely big enough for one person to eat in, and the narration notes that the room was designed to keep workers from stretching their ten-minute breaks. Other scenes take place avatar-to-avatar: a boardroom meeting with squad captains, a conversation on a virtual sofa, and a tour of a kiosk in M-City where Zahara Zhang and her squad have posted footage and evidence tying the attackers to Tekloid. The fieldwork also includes a crowded bar and a meeting point by a statue. There, an undercover approach to a branch of a group called BBB nearly comes apart when Jamie Aristo spots Dex and calls out his name. Beneath the procedural beats, the book keeps returning to work. After a vandalized store closes briefly for what Dex figures was a toilet break, the clerk is dismissed on the spot, and Dex wonders whether that person will end up in a makeshift shanty on the beach. In another passage, a character explains choosing ordinary people as beneficiaries in order to redistribute power, arguing that firms hold too much sway over management, employees and customers. Dex carries those ideas home with him. He feels guilty about band rehearsals and gigs when other people barely have enough to eat, and the answer he gets is that his being miserable would not make their lives any better. That conversation ends on transparency, the aim of letting people see what really sits behind the things they buy and the tools they use. His relationship with Annabelle has the same pull: he tries to support her without steering her, and she keeps sending him back to rehearsals. Renee gives advice he takes to heart, and Captain Larson concedes a point with a single nod, the closest he comes to admitting he was wrong. The humor is dry and shows up in the narration's eye for small indignities. The language is sometimes strong, and the pressure gets high enough that stims come up as a way to get through it. To pick it up, go by the numbered titles: each novel runs in order, so start with its lowest-numbered episode.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants a novel read straight through by its author and likes detective plots that stop to ask who pays when a store gets hit, from the clerk up to the company.
What sets it apart: The author reads the book, and the mystery is built around labor. Fired clerks, cramped break rooms and corporate power sit at the center of the casework, and the detective's own conscience is part of the story.
In a queer-normative future that isn’t all rainbows and sparkles, the justice you receive depends on your job – assuming you can get it at all. Enter vigilante detective Andersson Dexter, whose beat covers both the physical world and the online universe Marionette City. Helping people who have nowhere else to turn, he’s making the worlds better one client at a time, but is it enough? The Andersson Dexter Investigations is a four-book cyberpunk detective series by Nebula Award finalist M. Darusha Wehm.
Dex walks to his virtual office; you stay for the case and the chemistry.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Dex learns that support means changing his own habits, while Annabelle begins building a path beyond Stella Bish's influence.
Pixels and Flesh keeps its focus on Dex as he tries to make guilt useful instead of letting it turn into control. Renee's advice pushes him toward a quieter kind of support for Annabelle, and the BBB group, band rehearsals, and the M-City gig give that effort somewhere practical…
A public kiosk challenges Tekloid as Dex weighs pleasure, poverty, and transparency.
A public kiosk in M-City turns Zahara Zhang's work into a direct public test for Tekloid. Footage from the MUD takedown sits beside evidence linking the storefront attacks to the same people, giving the episode a clean investigative shape.
Dex's cramped Juicy Mart watch turns a quiet stakeout into a test of patience and judgment.
Pixels and Flesh keeps Dex in the back room of a Juicy Mart, where a ten-minute break room stretches into nearly three hours of sore-backed, prickling-legged waiting.
Dex's BBB investigation tightens when Jamie Aristo recognizes his user name and pulls him toward the group.
Pixels and Flesh frames Dex's latest findings as both a case update and a pressure test for his cover. In the squad-office boardroom, he walks Susanna Bells, Captains Zhang, Biagini, and Larson, with Annabelle present, through what he has seen inside Better Biz Brigade's trainee…
A virtual investigation turns uneasy when an avatar's comfort may be human, automated, or both.
Pixels and Flesh puts Annabelle in a frightening bind: she worries she may have helped the people behind the attacks, while Dex tries to keep her grounded and separate evidence from fear.
Dex and Cora turn a BBB housing delivery in Mont-Baronne Park into a lesson about liquidation, consolidation, and how management can move cheap assets through a firm.
In Pixels and Flesh Episode 14, Dex and Zahara Zhang make evidence of Tekloid employees and coordinated storefront attacks public through an M-City kiosk.
Dex spends three hours in a Juicy Mart back room in Rikie while Annabelle tracks two face-painted figures moving south from Barber.
Dex tells Captains Zhang, Rene Biagini, and Larson that Better Biz Brigade is a decentralized resistance network with anonymous logins from everywhere.
Annabelle shows Dex a Better Biz Brigade admin mock-up where course completions raise a user level that can be forged.
In Pixels and Flesh Episode 9, Dex and Annabelle investigate coordinated storefront attacks that damage property without significantly affecting Vertisales or Empire.
Dex and René Biagini investigate coordinated attacks on businesses owned by Empire and Tekloid, noting that the perpetrators avoid staff, surveillance, and theft.
Dex investigates a month of low-value break-ins and finds that nearly every targeted business belongs to Empire or Techloid.
In Pixels and Flesh Episode 6, Dex investigates S.
M.
Annabelle tells Dex that Omnitrack's work collecting Eurotrack metadata may include corporate espionage and sabotage.
In Pixels and Flesh Episode 3, Dex investigates organized petty incidents after an explosion while Zahara Jang reveals that her squad has experienced similar events.
In Pixels and Flesh Episode 2, Dex walks through M-City after filing a report about suspected extortioners and considers how anonymous avatars conceal competing loyalties.
In Pixels and Flesh Episode 1, detective Anderson Dexter investigates why Zahara Zhang inherited an entire disk block in the Cuba Quarter from the unknown Irina Nightingale.
In The Beauty of Our Weapons Episode 15, Dex and Annabelle coordinate an upgrade campaign after daily vandalism, broken instantiations, and account lockouts continue across M-City.
In The Beauty of Our Weapons Episode 14, Dex and Max meet at Le Retreux to coordinate distribution of an upgrade package intended to protect M-City and EverywhereNet users.
In The Beauty of Our Weapons Episode 13, Dex investigates whether Omnitrack, Bellis, and Scenera are expanding into rival markets through attacks on M-City.
A vigilante detective interrogates a suspect in a queer-normative cyberpunk future.
Vigilante detective Andersson Dexter navigates a queer-normative cyberpunk future to help those in need.
A vigilante detective investigates a disappearance in a queer-normative cyberpunk future.
A cyberpunk detective investigates a case involving a project manager named Stella in a queer-normative future.