Deja Vu [Paperback]

It is inevitable that David Proctor and Saskia Brandt, the two protagonists of Ian Hocking's futuristic novel Déjà Vu, will meet. Proctor is suspected of multiple murders, most recently that of his former colleague Bruce Shimoda, with whom he had once worked on the creation of a top-secret virtual world. He is also suspected of bombing the lab that he and Shimoda shared some twenty years earlier, back in 2002, an explosion which happened to kill his own wife. Saskia Brandt, in contrast, doesn't know her own back-story, but she does know that she works for the FIB, Europe's Federal Investigation Bureau, and that she's been ordered to capture Proctor. Saskia also knows that she is super-human insofar as manifold bits of information have been implanted in her brain. She quite literally knows things she doesn't know she knows: should she find herself in the cockpit of an airplane, for example, she may or may not discover that she is an expert pilot. Using investigative skills she'd been unaware she possessed, Saskia follows Proctor across continents, a high-tech chase scene that will leave readers, if not breathless, certainly interested.

Déjà Vu is a smart read filled with clever, fresh dialogue:

"Saskia stared, unfocused, at the wall. 'If I fail, what will happen to me?'

'For murder?' The death penalty. Although after the Richter ruling, you might be lucky and just have your brain wiped. Street-cleaning isn't so bad. They wear epaulettes.'"

The book offers readers an intriguing mystery right from the get-go: Saskia, who is being framed herself for murder at the book's opening, must solve the crime before a refrigerator repairman arrives in her office the next day. (Really. It is the scene early on in which Saskia discovers the corpse she's allegedly responsible for that hooked me on the book.) The plot of Déjà Vu is intricate enough to leave readers pondering its twists long after they've finished it. It may indeed be a bit too complicated, or may at least occasionally leave too much unexplained: I was left with a few questions that might require a second reading to clear up. In particular, the almost dreamlike segments in the book in which the characters are acting in the virtual environment Proctor helped create can be confusing and are less satisfying than the rest of the story. That said, I very much enjoyed the world Hocking has created and the characters with which he's populated it.

While the virtual world Hocking's scientists created left me cold, I was otherwise smitten with the author's view of the future, in particular with its cool gadgetry. In the 2020's, computers are everywhere. Driverless taxis tool around providing easy transport. Refrigerators self-diagnose and summon repairmen when appropriate. Best of all is the computer prototype that David Proctor makes so much use of: Ego is a close to omniscient, credit-card-sized personal computer that is forever increasing its own store of knowledge and performing helpful tricks. Ego constantly scans innumerable sources--the internet, police communications, spy novels--for information relevant to its master's situation, and upon command it is ready to act as an interpreter or magnetic card key, a voice-activated recorder or explosive device, a lie detector or, well, an iPod. In short, I want one. I just hope Steve Jobs is paying attention.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

In the future there will be worlds constructed by miniture robots, motorbikes that change colour by themselves and criminal minds will be reprogrammed by implanted computer chips. This is the world of Deja vu, the debut novel by Ian Hocking. Within these dazzling (and at times disturbing ideas) Hocking unravels a fast paced tale of murder and deceit.

A discredited scientist, David Proctor is trying to solve the mystery of his wife's death, of which he appears falsely accused. Forced to flee his home he is pursued by Saskia Brandt a detective with secrets of her own. It soon becomes clear that Saskia is also threatened and as the story progresses the hunter becomes the hunted.

At one level this is just a good old fashioned sci-fi thriller, but at another it is a tale of conflicting realities and Hocking uses his background as a research psychologist to explore questions of perception and identity. What, for example, happens to our sense of self if our memories are not our own? Given that most of our mental life is spent using our psyche (the inner reality) to make sense of the world (the outer reality) what happens when both can be manipulated? I would have liked the novel to explore these ideas further, but perhaps this would have intruded too much on the pace of the chase. It seems, however, more than a coincidence that one of the most appealing characters in the book is a computerised personal assistant called "Ego". Ego (no gender) will hack into other computers, read you your favourite novel and generally offer advice to ease your way through life. I for one, cannot wait for this part of Deja vu to become reality. In the meantime, read the book and fly into the fantasy.

Dr Isabel Ewart

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