A teenage girl found naked and fatally injured in a mountain forest two hundred miles from her home. The mutilated corpse of a young man in the Nevada desert, his heart and eyes removed. The post-apocalyptic world of a role-playing computer game - and the murderous spree of a psychopathic killer driven by delusions of superhuman supremacy. And rookie detective Summer Zeigler, pitched headlong into her first major case. But even as she tries to unpick the killer's twisted logic, he lures her into a cat-and-mouse game with a spectacular climax of his own devising.
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About the Author
Paul McAuley has worked as a researcher in biology at various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and for six years was a lecturer in plant science at St Andrews University. His first novel won the prestigious Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and his fifth the Arthur C. Clarke and the John W. Campbell Awards. He lives in North London. Visit the author's website at www.omegacom.demon.co.uk
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Boydetective
Format:Paperback
A change of pace from the ever reliable McAuley: an enthralling police procedural. McAuley's recent thrillers - Mind's Eye, White Devils - have been sui generis page-turners with dazzling prose style and the author proves no less adept turning his hand to a more familiar genre. As ever, McAuley's characters are the standout features here, coming to vibrant and utterly believable life. Very highly recommended!
Format:Paperback
Paul McAuley is better known as a writer of intelligent science fiction, so this is a departure for him.
As a police procedural, it works well. He has created a likeable heroine, a suitably grotesque villian and vicious sidekick, a reasonably intriguing scenario and assorted supporting cast. The plot, involving on-line gaming in part, moves at a fair pace (after a slow start) and comes to an appropriately complicated denoument. The book is worth a read.
But, I have to wonder why he bothered. As an exercise in the genre? The whole thing feels as if he deliberately set out to take absolutely all the standard cliches of police procedurals and prove he could fit them together. The heroine came into police work after trying other things and has been promoted to detective early; she has a conveniently out-of-sight but not out-of-mind ex-boyfriend, and a fling with a character who could be recurring if required. She teams up with a fiesty single mum cop, and then another one. She has a kooky mother with an interest in police work (mercifully, this one doesn't pack a .45 and crash viewings in funeral parlours). She has a gruff but understanding boss, but comes up against a smalltown redneck sherrif. The villian is grotesque to the point of caricature and the vicious sidekick is, inevitably, ex-Special Forces (and a Brit). Much of the action takes place in spooky backwoods.
Several British SF writers have tried their hand at police novels recently, Charles Stross, China Melville and Ken McLeod (although MacLeod cheats, because "Night Sessions" is also an SF book). Did they get together at a convention and dare each other o write a cop novel?... Read more ›
As a police procedural, it works well. He has created a likeable heroine, a suitably grotesque villian and vicious sidekick, a reasonably intriguing scenario and assorted supporting cast. The plot, involving on-line gaming in part, moves at a fair pace (after a slow start) and comes to an appropriately complicated denoument. The book is worth a read.
But, I have to wonder why he bothered. As an exercise in the genre? The whole thing feels as if he deliberately set out to take absolutely all the standard cliches of police procedurals and prove he could fit them together. The heroine came into police work after trying other things and has been promoted to detective early; she has a conveniently out-of-sight but not out-of-mind ex-boyfriend, and a fling with a character who could be recurring if required. She teams up with a fiesty single mum cop, and then another one. She has a kooky mother with an interest in police work (mercifully, this one doesn't pack a .45 and crash viewings in funeral parlours). She has a gruff but understanding boss, but comes up against a smalltown redneck sherrif. The villian is grotesque to the point of caricature and the vicious sidekick is, inevitably, ex-Special Forces (and a Brit). Much of the action takes place in spooky backwoods.
Several British SF writers have tried their hand at police novels recently, Charles Stross, China Melville and Ken McLeod (although MacLeod cheats, because "Night Sessions" is also an SF book). Did they get together at a convention and dare each other o write a cop novel?... Read more ›
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