3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous SF Mystery, November 18, 2004
Joe Clifford Faust possesses the rare ability to produce science fiction that is simultaneously fun and substantial, as this fabulous SF mystery from the late 80's demonstrates. The premise is inspired: in the near future, the police are just too damn busy to handle every case, so the 31st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides victims the right and resources to conduct their own investigation.
Our likable protagonist, Payne, finds occasion to take the 31st, when he comes home one evening to find a dead girl in his apartment. Payne and his friend Bailey are club-hopping bachelors (well, everyone is in THIS future society, and that's where the fun comes in), but Payne is also a skilled bio-engineer, so he's prepared to act as his own CSI.
The bio-medicine in Death of Honor is impressively convincing (Faust must have done some serious research here), and handled in a way that the reader can follow. Payne's labwork is used to expose critical plot-points, rather than as an excuse to toss around bleeding-edge buzzwords. In a sense, this novel was considerably ahead of it's time--fifteen years later, we're a nation of forensics buffs.
And Faust really knows how to structure a murder mystery, too; this isn't merely sci-fi tarted up with noir cliches. Neither the mystery nor the SF suffers in this marriage. Also refreshing is the fact that the resolution doesn't involve any shadowy billionaires or evil zaibatsus (well, maybe an ambiguous zaibatsu). ADOH's characters, "villains" included, are ordinary, flawed human beings, plausibly driven to tragic decisions--responses demanded by the corrupt world they inhabit.
Oh, I should add that the ending is a real nail-biter.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
what the future looked like in the 80s., February 22, 2009
"Twenty-first century New York- where power failures are a frequent fact of life..where nightclubs fulfill all your fantasies..and where the only things still considered illegal are murder and trying to get away to one of the last free enclaves, Australia."
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I couldn't put this one down, November 17, 2011
This is a great book. It's a sci-fi, intrigue, mystery that'll keep you glued to it until you've finished. It moves well, tells a great story and keeps you guessing until the end. Written in the 80's, it's an interesting look back at what we thought the future might be like and just how close Mr. Faust was with some of it.
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