Hot Time in Old Town (Mathew Swain, Bk. 1) [Paperback]

Mike McQuay (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; First Edition edition (August 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553148117
• ISBN-13: 978-0553148114
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 3.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,371,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars future noir!, August 18, 2010

By 

Dr Edward Diesel (Rhyolite, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hot Time in Old Town (Mathew Swain, Bk. 1) (Paperback)

Great pulp sci fi from Mike McQuay. Why haven't these Mathew Swain books been snapped up for the movies?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mike McQuay, Underrated Master of Pulp Fiction, January 17, 2006

By 

Raegan Butcher (Rain City, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hot Time in Old Town (Mathew Swain, Bk. 1) (Paperback)

Mike McQuay is one of my all-time favorite writers. His novelization of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is a classic in the future-noir genre. This is the 1st in his equally enjoyable pulp science fiction series of novels featuring the endearingly sarcastic private investigator, Mathew Swain. This book is dedicated, like all of the books in the Swain series, to Raymond Chandler. It's a perfect choice because no one except Andrew Vachss writes better in the style that Chandler helped create than Mike McQuay. It might not be Shakespeare but its tightly-written, fast-paced and enjoyable on a lot of levels. Reading any of the Mathew Swain books will certainly reveal the debts owed to McQuay by William Gibson and the scriptwriters of Blade Runner and a whole later generation of cyber-punk authors. There are four books in the Swain series and they are all great fun.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still remember this from childhood, April 18, 2001

By 

James Versluys - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hot Time in Old Town (Mathew Swain, Bk. 1) (Paperback)

I still remember getting this Buck Rogers hair cut to match the look of the character on this book. I got it sometime in the 80's when I was a kid, and yet with all the bad memory I have for so much fiction, this stays with me more than two decades later.

The others said it, but it bears repeating- this was cyber punk done earlier and better than elsewhere.

I've picked up other McQuay books- they're notso hotso. But this group of Swain books captured the dystopian world fantasy perfectly. I don't know if it was made before or after Blade Runner, but it had to either been influenced by or was an influence on the making of the movie. Either way, he captured the feel of a dystopia perfectly here. It's clearly where his talent lies.