ONE OF US

Harper Collins £14.99

Michael Marshall Smith exposes his vivid imagination once more. This time story concerns the low life of a future America who subject themselves to client’s dreams and nightmares for them. This is legal but the illegal activity of memory storing can be a profitable sideline.

For whatever means people sometimes want to get rid of memories - for a rest or to cheat on their partner or to hide a crime. The latter is the main reason the process is a crime. Lie detector tests are useless if the memory is absent.

Hap Thompson, a petty criminal, is a successful dream but greed sets him on the memory storing road. All seems fine until he receives a memory of a murder. He can’t lose the memory unless he finds the owner and replaces it. Hap sets out to find her using the bits of memory he has of her. The trail leads to a dangerous series of events with new revelations along the way.

The fresh imagination of Michael Marshall Smith is in top form even though there are a few confusions which better editing may have sorted out. The reader must also either overlook, or accept as part of the irony, the ludicrous activities and limitations of memory storing. It seems far too convenient for the story-line that Hap must get the client to take back the memory, but if he could just dump it there would be no story.

The writing, as usual, is slick, fast and intelligent. The conclusion however is slightly messy, trying to weave together far too many threads and ends up with chapters of explanation.

All in all, though it is not as focused as his previous novel, Spares, One of Us is an extremely enjoyable read.

G.Hurry

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