Market Forces

This isn't the first time that Morgan has linked death, destruction and immorality with the world of big business - he did something similar in Broken Angels - but here the message becomes even clearer. Chris Faulkner is a high-profile addition to the Conflict Investment team at Shorn Associates - his business is the profit to be made from small wars in far off countries; his reputation forged in the formalised road rage battles that characterise a Britain where the rich/poor divide is more obvious than ever. The complications are a wife drifting away from him, repulsed by his trade, and a media star attracted to him by that same blood-soaked glamour. Morgan has again welded cinematic influences (he acknowledges Mad Max and Rollerball, but here they meet Wall Street) with his singlehanded revival of the eighties cyberpunk science fiction ethic. Bold, violent and hard-boiled, this is, in the end a morality tale, told with verve and conviction by the fastest rising star in British SF.(Kirkus UK)