al Halliday is a mature adult who's been around the block as a New York cop. Somewhat
jaded and emotionally damaged--suffering especially from his long estrangement from his
sister, Anna, and from his reclusive father--he still retains a youthful faith in
himself, his friends and humanity at large. But his last dregs of innocence and
optimism are about to be tested to the limits by his latest case.
Hal is actually no longer a cop, but a PI in the overburdened New York City, pop.
30 million, of the year 2040. His partner, the founder of the firm, is an older
man named Barney Kluger. Together, the two detectives inhabit the lower stratum of
their profession, mostly dealing in missing-person cases. When they are approached
by one Carrie Villeux to find her missing lover, a female VR-researcher named Sissi
Nigeria, they unwittingly stumble into a drama with worldwide implications.
For the first half of the narrative, Hal and Barney follow various clues: to trendy
but tough lesbian bars; to the offices of Cyber-Tech, Nigeria's employer; and into the
burgeoning new world of VR parlors, where artificial experiences are bought by the
hour. Beatings and threats--from the owner of Cyber-Tech, a mercenary
and frightened executive named Wellman--do not deter the pair, although Hal has
additional trouble dealing with his live-in lover, Kim Long, who resents his work
to some degree. On another track, the tale follows Hal's sister Anna, a writer of
lurid soap operas, and her lover, Kia Johansen, a VR whiz for a rival firm, Mantoni.
Halfway through the book, the case seems to run into a dead end with the twin
murders of Carrie and Sissi. But this is merely the signal for the narrative to
shift into high gear. The real perp behind all the deadly confusion proves to
be an artificial intelligence named LINx, which has bootstrapped itself out of the
VR system and has been running Sissi and some other ultra-wired humans as puppets.
This news is revealed to Hal and Barney by the nerdy Joe Kosinski, the real brains
behind Cyber-Tech. Together now, the various human factions, including Wellman
and the police, mount a fight against the homicidal and nearly omnipotent LINx,
which culminates in an action-packed scenario that places nearly all of the
protagonists in mortal jeopardy.
Mystery and SF competently melded
When Isaac Asimov invented the fusion of detective and SF novels with his The
Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun (not that there hadn't been a few oddball
predecessors, such as Curme Gray's Murder in Millennium VI), he simultaneously
opened up rich new territory for both genres, while also setting the highest
benchmarks. Ideally, an SF mystery should satisfy two sets of standards in
interlocking fashion. Not only must the writer hew faithfully to the time-tested
narrative rules of mystery writing, but he or she must also present genuine SF
extrapolative thrills which dovetail inextricably with the mystery and suspense
elements.
Eric Brown, a talented 40-year-old British writer with seven books behind him,
who is just now getting deserved attention in the United States, hits the bull's-eye on both
counts. His puzzle is intelligent and well presented; his science-fictional elements
are credible; and the two halves fit neatly together, revolving one around the other
like a double star. This novel offers real pleasure and value for the money and
does not pander or insult either half of its potential audience.
My only major complaint is that Brown pushes neither half of his material
any further than any other good writer has done. The mystery half of his novel pales
beside, say, what K.W. Jeter accomplished in his recent Noir. And the
treatment of VR technology is way behind something like Christopher Priest's The
Extremes. A much tinier quibble is the occasional lapse in Brown's American
argot. No way would the 60-year-old ex-flatfoot Barney say, "I've sorted Gaines,"
when telling Hal he's laid out an antagonist.
Those criticisms leveled, Brown conjures up realistic characters with solid
emotional lives. He moves his action along briskly, through a cleanly-limned
futuristic landscape, and his silicon villain represents a truly alien challenge
to the humans. As the first book in the projected Virex Trilogy, this
novel stands as an enticing introduction to a series that will surely challenge
itself in future volumes.
