"Starlight" by SandMan (sandman@bitsmart.com). Steve Whiley is a private dick - a detective, that is. Crystal Dawn (about whom a country western song should be written, if there isn't one already) is a netstar who needs protection from a stalker. Steve gets the gig. My husband says I am sexy when I use technical terms.

Crystal is a beautiful dame. She has the nicest set of teeth the author has come across in a long time. The author didn't say that, but maybe he will in another story. It's something Sergeant Friday would have said, had he been allowed to say what was really on his mind. I think Magnum P.I. actually DID say it once, but maybe that's something I just made up.

The story is set in the future, at a time when soaps are virtual reality on the Internet instead of the simple fare we have on TV now and when earthquakes could be predicted so accurately that Californians time their lovemaking to take advantage of the movement of the earth. Hemingway would love that. Ernest - not the blonde Hemingway. Anyway, they do sex about the same way we do it now, except that they occasionally line up their beds to point to the epicenter. Imagine that.

This is not so much a sex story as a very good detective story with sex in it. I liked it a lot.

The most novel spellcheck mistake award goes to this author's accidental use of "prescient" instead of "precinct" - unless P.I stands for Pussy Inspector, in which case prescience would be more useful than a precinct. At least I think so. Sometimes the gang down at the precinct think they are prescient, but they probably just make a good guess now and then about whether she's wearing panties or not.

Also, "uno momento" is a tiny amount of time in Spanish. A "memento" is a sort of souvenir. Look for the word "memory" in the root. I am a cunning linguist - a sort of a word dick. That's my job. Mark VII.