THE TIN MAN

Once more featuring retired USAF Colonel Patrick McLanahan, last seen helping independence-seeking Taiwan turn the tide of battle against the Peoples Republic of China (Fatal Terrain, 1997), bestseller Brown’s first rocket-fueled Bantam title should lift off nicely, especially now that McLanahan—civilian director of a high-tech company making cutting-edge advancements in strategic devices for the armed forces—has become a superhumanly powerful vigilante called —The Tin Man.— He uses his miraculous new devices to save his brother, a rookie cop in Sacramento, who has been wounded in a bank-robbery shootout masterminded by the Aryan Brigade. Although Brown’s electro-reactive collinear prose style hangs on the most effective distribution of parallel ideas per paragraph, the racing methamphetamine lift of his futuristic hardware plot remains, well, really cool.