The Plutonium Blonde

Book excerpt: Zachary Nixon Johnson is the last private eye on earth (long story, starts here). And in the pop culture-crazed, deco-inspired world of 2057, that makes him a bit of a celebrity. It also makes him a magnet for trouble. In his years as a PI, Zach has seen a lot of strange things and solved a lot of crazy cases. But when the famous BB Starr, a former exotic dancer who is now the CEO of the world’s largest corporation, hires him to find her illegal, plutonium-powered, psychotic android clone, Zach knows that the weirdness of his life is about to get a whole lot weirder. Once Zach takes the case, his life is suddenly filled with unwanted publicity, uncommon dangers, and unexplained assassination attempts. He realizes that not only is this case more trouble than it’s worth, but the mystery of the missing android is deeper than he thought. Together with his beautiful, kick-boxing surgeon girlfriend Electra, his genius inventor tech expert Randy, and his holographic, sentient super-computer sidekick HARV, Zach must find a way to unravel the mystery, find the missing android, and quite possibly save all humanity from total destruction. What some guys will do for five thousand credits per day, plus expenses. REVIEWS An excellent first novel in the style of the great Douglas Adams ... This novel can be universally recommended to anyone with a funny bone. --Cinescape Surprisingly clever ... spoofs the genre and everything else in sight. --Science Fiction Chronicle (Best of '01) A fast-paced science fiction noir thriller that has entertaining plot twists. --Romantic Times Fast-paced, witty and shrewd ... futuristic pulp for the thinking reader ... No one who got two paragraphs into this dark, droll, downright irresistible novel could ever bear to put it down until the last heart pounding moment. --SF Site A tongue-in-cheek hardboiled attitude .. good fun for those who can handle the concentrated doses of humor. --Locus Manages to blend the pulpy hard-boiled detective genre with pulpy sf for an entertaining read that pokes fun at both. The writing and dialogue is snappy and smart and the story is fast paced. I can't recommend enough for anyone looking for a fun twist on sf and detective novels. --Pink Raygun