Book review
Written by Sarah Pinborough
Gollancz hardback/trade paperback
Release date 25 March 2010

Murder detective Cass Jones has too many gruesome cases on his hands, and is also on the take. Business as usual for the post-credit crunch London police...

This is a convincing portrait of a near future world, where the global economy has been rescued from recession by The Bank, established by an alliance of billionaire tycoons (for entirely benevolent reasons, of course) and now very much in charge. For the ordinary people services have been cut back, while the police are reliant on performance-related pay (that’s never paid, leaving them reliant in reality on kickbacks from the more decent mobsters).

It’s a set-up that definitely has the legs for a series, and while there are occasional slips in the details (mainly over trifling technicalities, such as analogue television apparently remaining on-air well after the planned 2012 shut-off), these are unimportant compared with the wider vision. There’s also a supernatural element that drops interesting hints for future volumes, while the damaged Cass Jones (adulterer, killer and addict) manages to remain appealing despite his many unpleasant traits.

Pinborough also wins points for turning cop clichés on their heads, playing with the paranoid undertones, which more than makes up for some clumsy over-emphasis on the finality of death in the early pages. Anthony Brown

VERDICT: 7/10
Crime-horror set in an all-too-credible near future.