Today's good read starts out, like 'Archangel Protocol', with an ex-cop for doubtful hero. This one pushed an investigation too far and found himself looking after the 'spares': dumb clones of the wealthy and their offspring, farmed for replacement body parts. Jack Randall is also a former Bright Eyes, soldier in a war so terrifying that survival means drug addiction. And wherever he goes, violent death is close behind.
Michael Marshall Smith's prose is taut and dark, liberally foul-mouthed and occasionally very funny, as he takes Randall (and the reader) ever deeper back into his past to face the many traps of his struggle for the spares. As to the "dumbness" of the clones, MMS tackles the ethics of the great clone debate head-on, but largely succeeds in preventing any morality get in the way of fist-in-the-face cyberpunk. It would be a shame to say more. "Some books stretch the imagination. This one mugs it," claims one review in the blurb and that's not far off the mark. Spielberg's DreamWorks has taken out a film option, according to Smith's website. If there's a director who can handle it...
11:04:21 AM link 
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