James Knapp, State of Decay (Roc, 2010)
Whoever wrote the back cover text for James Knapp's State of Decay owes him an apology. Not because it's bad cover text, mind you, but because it sells the book as a fairly straightforward cyberpunk noir, with a two-fisted detective hunting down an evil conspiracy based around cybernetic zombies. Cool, yes, but not at all an adequate description of a book that has much more to offer than just noir, zombies, and fisticuffs.
There is a detective, of course. And there are zombies, used legally in the war zone of The Grinder to fight an endless, undescribed war. And when the book opens, that detective is busily engaged in trying to shut down a smuggling ring illegally bringing zombies (Ok, he calls them "revivers" -- if there's a weakness to the book it's in Knapp's lack of grace with the various character and institution names) into the country. Putatively moving pleasure models -- and I'll give you a moment to think about all of the unpleasant implications there -- the smugglers are actually bringing in fully prepped military models, in preparation for . . . something.
That's where things get interesting. Instead of following his investigation, the narrative jumps. First we meet a local police detective trying to solve a string of brutal murders committed by a killer who might literally be invisible. There's a brutally effective but basically decent female cage fighter who stumbled into something bigger than any staged fight she's ever engaged in. And there's a maybe-psychic and definite-alcoholic who's having prophetic dreams about the other characters, and who thinks that maybe she can help.
Of course their stories are tied together in unexpected ways, but they ways they meet are satisfying and logical. Nobody meets cute here. It's all tightly bound in the strictures of the narrative. And what the characters find as they draw inevitably closer is a fascinating, well-constructed conspiracy that avoids cliché and propels the narrative forward.
There are a couple of weak spots. Knapp's ear for names is a little hit-or-miss; while the rationale for including a "Heinlein Corporation" in the book is there in Knapp's sly framing of the citizenship-only-for-service debate that Starship Troopers opened up a half-century ago, it still jars the reader a little bit. The fight scenes are a little choppy in places, as if Knapp was writing them while trying to get a reasonable handle on the tactical implications of everything he'd created.
But these are minor quibbles, and far outweighed by the book's strengths. The dialog is strong and believable, despite the massive amounts of infodump exposition the narrative requires. The plot hums along, moving briskly but repeatedly dodging the obvious next twist. And the conceit Knapp is playing with here is a fascinating one, and bigger than one book can hold. Hopefully the next one in the series will be up soon, because I want to know what happens next.
