Noir (Bantam Spectra Book) - Hardcover

Jeter, K.W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553104837 ISBN 13: 9780553104837

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

Synopsis

In his acclaimed novels Dr. Adder, The Glass Hammer, and the Blade Runner books, K.W. Jeter masterfully re-created the grim and gritty world of Ridley Scott's classic science fiction film masterpiece.  Now Jeter returns with a startling and stylish new vision of the future as only he could imagine it, a dark and disturbing universe that can be described with one word...  

Welcome to the Pacific Rim, the new center of the civilized world.  As the rest of the planet sinks toward economic and social disaster, the cities on the coast have become a neon-lit, high-tech paradise.  Chief among them is Los Angeles, a sparkling metropolis attracting lost souls from across a shattered continent.  

But beneath the sleek surface lies a labyrinthine underground feeding on the darkest human desires.  Here the wealthy seek forbidden thrills through an anonymous on-line computer system that makes use of prowlers--masked simulations of human users programmed to delve into the most taboo of the hard-core sexual underworld and bring back exotic and erotic experiences to their safeguarded users.  For most people, the prowlers are a way to indulge in their wildest sexual fantasies.  But for others, they are something far more dangerous.

When a young executive of one of the world's most powerful corporations is found brutally slain, a retired ex-cop is called in to find his missing prowler.  The corporation believes the young man's prowler is still "alive" and they want it found, but they don't care to reveal why.

McNihil was an information cop forced into early retirement.  He knows he is walking straight into a trap, but he has no choice.  He must descend into the noir underground, his only companion a ruthless female operative named November who has a desperate agenda of her own.  Together they will uncover a web of evil far more extensive than McNihil ever imagined...a vast conspiracy that threatens to blur forever the line between the sane safety of the daylight world and the dark, dangerous world of noir.

Noir is K.W. Jeter at his very best, a dazzling and inventive futuristic drama of mystery, menace, and sexual terror set in a society of glitter and sinister darkness in which no one can be trusted and everything is far worse than it seems.  

About this title

Review:

Imagine a fast-moving computer game set in the black-and-white environment of a 1940s detective movie and you'll begin to get some idea of the mixed metaphors that fill the air in K.W. Jeter's difficult but ultimately rewarding new futuristic thriller.

Jeter, who also writes a series of novels based on the popular Blade Runner film about apocalyptic Los Angeles, centers Noir in that same city, now a dark jewel of the dominant Pacific Rim. A detective named McNihil (yes, you got it) has had his eyes surgically altered so that everything looks like an early Bogart movie to him. "Gray newspapers with significant headlines--'Dewey Defeats Truman,''Pearl Harbor Bombed'--moldered in the gutters, or were nudged along the broken sidewalks by the same night wind that cut through McNihil's jacket," Jeter writes about the scene of a plane crash where the detective has been summoned by a corporate villain. A top young executive has been murdered, and McNihil is arm-twisted into tracking down the dead man's missing "prowler"--a computer simulation that roams the world like an electronic ghost.

Aided by a young woman called November, whose fingertips are alive with lethal magnetic currents, McNihil brings his--and Jeter's--unique noir vision to bear on a world that for all its weirdness is the ultimately believable extension of our present-day nightmares. --Dick Adler

From the Publisher:

Praise for The Edge of Human, a Blade Runner novel by K.W. Jeter:

"A serious novel, well written and imaginative...It remains faithful to its roots and becomes a story Jeter can call his own."
--The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

"Jeter fully exploits the Dickian paradoxes of illusion vs. reality, man vs. machine, that the film only hinted at."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A really rare animal...Highly recommended for anyone looking for a good read."
--The Commercial Appeal, Memphis

"A good, fast-moving story...Jeter also plays with readers' heads the way that [Philip K.] Dick loved to."
--The Orlando Sentinel

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0553104837
• ISBN 13: 9780553104837
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400