Synopsis
After an aborted nuclear conflict allows America to conquer Russia, ex-CIA operative turned private eye Dean Joplin investigates a politically delicate case of murder
Reviews
An unidentified corpse found in a hotel room. A baffled police investigator turning for help to a cynical, disillusioned private investigator. A few fistfights, a bit of sex and red herrings galore. These may seem no more than typical conventions for a detective novel of the hard-boiled school. But U.S.S.A. is far more. Its setting is the near future, in a Russia conquered by the U.S. after WW III, which ended not in Armageddon, but with the failure of Soviet missile systems to function. Madsen ( Black Plume ) convincingly depicts an occupation more entrepreneurial than military. Yesterday's enemies are today's customers: Golden Arches and the Goodyear Blimp, American Express and 7-11, all have emigrated; a Disneyland is under construction in Moscow. Private eye Dan Joplin, a CIA agent whose job disappeared with victory, walks mean streets from booming downtown Moscow to a Siberia devastated by nuclear attack, where survivors are kept in strict quarantine. To solve the novel's puzzle he must understand a spectrum of a well-drawn characters, Russian and American, caught in a vortex of change that has made previous knowledge irrelevant, and living in a new order emphasizing buying and selling, better able to supply consumer goods than value systems. This superior thriller owes something to Tom Clancy, but much more to Raymond Chandler. BOMC and Mysterious Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This engrossing futuristic thriller is set in the U.S.-occupied Soviet Union where the Military Occupation Police are attempting to solve a series of brutal murders of individuals connected to the "NUCDET," the quarantined and heavily contaminated area of nuclear detonation. There, where victims of radiation-induced illnesses are doomed to spend their final days imprisoned behind barbed wire, no price is too high to pay for freedom. This vision of the "New Russia" is fascinating and totally believable, from the opening of the Moscow Disneyland to the desperate trek across the tundra by a double-agent's escaping family. The author, a screenwriter, employs a fast-paced cinematic style which carries the reader smoothly from scene to scene. The movie version can't be far behind.
- Marcia R. Hoffman, M.L.S., Hoechst Celanese Corp., Somerville, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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