Noir detective fiction and cyberpunk make beautiful music together in Marc Matz's first novel, Nocturne for a Dangerous Man. Gavilan Robie, the hero, is first cousin to legendary PIs Travis McGee and Dave Robicheaux. Mostly he recovers missing art. But sometimes he "tries to recover people who are lost and need, badly, to be found." For him, these jobs are "the equivalent of having a stiff drink to take the edge off an endless hangover"; he's addicted to staking his life on his ability to beat the odds.
Robie's world has survived multiple man-made natural disasters: climate change, rising seas, unstoppable plagues, and famine. Now Siv Matthiessen, brilliant executive for a multinational corporation, has been seized by ecoterrorists. Despite ransom demands, Matthiessen's boss believes they'll kill her. Robie tracks her captors using advances in robotics, medicine, and cyber-technology, along with various martial arts, the I-Ching, Taoist philosophy, music, and contacts around the globe. He uncovers a web of unholy alliances among a rival corporation, a corrupt foreign government official, opportunistic bankers, and organized crime.
This intricate thriller demands careful reading. Matz reveals his world as the story unfolds; both are complex. But Gavilan Robie makes this a debut no fan of William Gibson or James Lee Burke should miss. --Nona Vero
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In the middle of the 21st century, Gavilan Robie has retired from rescuing kidnap victims for the covert Action Rescue Committee and is content to play his antique cello, quarrel with his mistress and keep his hand in by recovering missing works of art. But when Siv Mattheissen, the female lover of a high-powered lesbian CEO of an international conglomerate, is kidnapped by a self-proclaimed eco-terrorist group named "the Erinyes," Robie receives an offer he cannot refuse. Using a host of old connections as well as high-tech (virtual personas) and low-tech (martial arts) techniques, Robie tracks the kidnappers to a Chinese-controlled bank in Chile. Matz's first novel boasts a robust background (including substantial global warming, among other features), a large cast of ethnically diverse characters (Robie's own ancestry includes French, English, Scot, Basque and Native American) and a wealth of detail about life in the future. The world-building is so involved, in fact, that it sometimes slows the novel's pace and substantially diminishes its climax. But overall, this is an excellent debut, and one featuring a sensitive protagonist certain to appeal to intelligent action-SF readers. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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