Ah, a book ideally suited to this sort of puny little review: I don't want to say too much, so as not to blow the Big Secret. (The example of the back-cover blurb serves as a warning.) But frankly, I bet you'll clue in after the first few pages. The characters don't; in their response to this and the other two plot points, dramatic irony is mercilessly pursued.

There's the part I can't say much about, and then there are the flashbacks to near-future political machinations at a Pittsburgh high-tech company. (Though it's set wholly in Pittsburgh, it didn't give me much of a sense of the city, though I guess Hogan's got an excuse.) The material is workable if not novel, but the writing is flat. I can accept this sort of stuff from say Robert Forward because that's how he packages his technological speculation (though I'd rather he write essays), but this isn't even hard SF unless you were pretty drunk when talking to the AI people.