Electric by
Chad Taylor
pbk out January 03
(Cape)
at £10
February, 1998 and there is a series of power cuts in Auckland, New Zealand.
When power is returned, it causes spikes in innumerable computers. Sam Usher's job is
to recover lost data. He is a lost soul, taking too many drugs and trying to get by. When
he meets two scientists, Jules and Candy, his life becomes even more complicated.
Jules is working on some esoteric mathematical puzzle, and Candy is convinced
her knowledge of fluid dynamics will provide the improved ship's crew. But Sam falls
for Candy's charms, and Jules is found in the street beaten nearly to death. When Candy
flees the country, all Sam is left with is a sheet of numbers and the words 'Anyway,
Freedom, Goodbye.'
Chad Taylor mixes the disintegration of the exterior life of the city and the
interior life of his protagonist easily and effectively. As the power failures bite, so Sam's
life goes from bad to worse. Taylor also gives us two opposite spirals of plot
development. Sam, an expert on deciphering frazzled data in computers, has to decipher
the puzzle and the three words left him by the now dead Jules. As the mystery unwinds
in one direction, so the increasing ingestion of banned substances by Sam confuses the
external world, frying the circuitry of the reader's brain. Auckland is populated by the
Chrysler Building and the Eiffel Tower, mysterious people and incomprehensible events.
The denouement is sudden and shocking.
A fast and furious read that carries you on a drug high to a dizzying conclusion.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
