Those Who Walk in Darkness [Hardcover]

John Ridley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2003

Soledad "Bullet" O'Roark writes her own rules. Usually it gets her in trouble. On her first day with the L.A.P.D's elite MTAC squad, Soledad takes down an outlawed super-powered freak with a weapon she designed herself – a definite violation. Her love life is no less chaotic. It's hard to find an decent guy with nothing to hide. But there's not much room in Soledad's life for romance when a cop-killer is on the loose. The "baddest" freak of all, this one can control people and make them commit anything he wants...including murder.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When a supervillain wastes San Francisco in this high-octane futuristic thriller from screenwriter Ridley (The Drift), the U.S. decides to expel all "metanormals" within its borders. Those who choose to remain are hunted down by MTacs, police units who only have one job-kill the freaks. It isn't a terribly original premise-Batman fans will recognize the influence of Frank Miller's seminal graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns-but that's fine, because a premise is all it is, and Ridley knows it. Soledad O'Roark, a 26-year-old MTac and an engineering genius, has a virulent hatred of metanormals. Her tale is one of unremitting darkness, and from early on it's easy to tell it won't have a happy ending. For all the bleakness, though, Ridley makes it hard not to pull for Soledad. Readers will find themselves torn between sympathy, empathy, pity and disgust, often on the same page. With its lavish fight scenes, the book was clearly written with an eye on film adaptation. Yet Ridley, whose Hollywood credits include work on Three Kings and Undercover Brother, knows how to make his story work both as a novel and as a proto-screenplay. And as a novel, it works very well indeed.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the near future, real superheroes pop up and start saving people from crime and disaster. But then superbaddies show up, too, and eventually, San Francisco is toast. Declaring no tolerance toward all supers, the president opens season on those who won't leave the country. Big-city police create MTacs--special units to hunt the "muties," as the supers are popularly called--and L.A. cop Soledad O'Roark, 26, has just joined one. On her first mission, she literally pulls her unit out of the fire but gets in trouble because she uses an as-yet-unapproved gun. Banished to a desk, she stews until an ambitious lawyer bulldozes her into going counteroffensive. Lucky she hires the shark, since no sooner is she on the street again, as a patrolling uniform, than she drops another mutie and is back in dutch for attracting attention during an internal investigation. Of course, she is back with an MTac for a showdown with the bereaved husband of her second mutie kill; meanwhile, she has developed a love interest that leads to a second showdown and a moral: Never forgive your chosen enemies, even if one of them loves you, saves your life, and saves another life when you can't. Some moral. Violent crime specialist Ridley's foray into sf reads like a glorified screenplay, all tough talk and action waiting for a director and bodies to give it any life. Since Matrix producer Joel Silver has made a deal, admirers of Love Is a Racket (1997) and The Drift (2002) could wait for the movie. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Aspect (May 20, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044653093X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446530934
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,566,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A movie treatment in book form, April 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Those Who Walk in Darkness (Hardcover)

Leaving aside the plot holes and the lack of anything but the most cursory character development, the book is just badly written and in dire need of an editor. Long chapters of synopsis are combined with sentence fragments to create something that reads like a quickly dashed-off screenplay treatment. I'm sure the destruction of San Francisco and the various metahuman/cop battles will look great on screen, but as a book, this makes comic books look deep.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bitter much?, July 31, 2007

By 

Evan the Dweezil (A Place-Sort Of, Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Those Who Walk in Darkness (Hardcover)

I haven't seen this much pent up anger in a book since Order of the Pheonix. Soledad is an angry, two demensional, bigot who's a Mary Sue to top off the nastiness that exudes from her. Her coworkers are angry. The boyfriend is a nonentity. The Mutants (whom we get so little background about) seem to be the only faction in this story that have a right to be angry since they're being hunted down regardless of their personal histories.

Anger about Los Angeles. It's so plainly obvious that the author hates LA with a passion that makes his blood boil. Why, oh why, did he set it there? He even hates the nice days in town. I went to college in LA and know first hand that it's not like what appears on tv, but holy cats, this guy really doesn't like it. The pure venom in the narration makes it that much more difficult to put up with such borederline protagonists.

Also, is this a book or a script? The use of colons instead of verbs was simply poor form. I understand that Mr. Ridley is a tv writer, which is great, but he needs to understand that prose and scripts are different beasts, or his editor should be fired.

I picked up this book because it had a great title, which is the only thing that was any good about it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Are the 'supes' bad or did we make them that way???, October 27, 2005

By 

R. Kyle (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Those Who Walk in Darkness (Hardcover)

Soledad O'Roarke is a BAMF LA cop who specializes in killing supernaturals. When the supernaturals first came, they were heroes. An unfortunate accident changed that and now it seems they're rogues.

This is a dark and disturbing book. Seems like the whole class of supernaturals is branded here by one's failings. It's worth a read, but the hate for a whole class of people is just too darn close to Nazi Germany to make this more than a one-book affair for me.