KEEPING TIME

by David Bear ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 23, 1979

Billed as science fiction, this is really a rather ordinary hard-boiled-narrator detective story which happens to be set in 1999 (after the 1980s gas wars and the 1990s Apathy Era); but, though Bear dips only slightly into sf technology, he does work hard--and sometimes to good effect--at providing a dank, depressingly detailed vision of 1999 Manhattan. Shamus Jack Hughes, ex-lawyer and gloomy widower, is hired to find out who stole five time-storage cassettes from a new experimental ""time deposit bank"" (posh clients can put away bits of their own time and draw on it later). So Hughes starts questioning the five whose tapes have been stolen--a great old actor, a top woman writer, a magnate, a senator, a famous widow--and then these folks start dying, apparently killed by the mechanism used to trigger the time-trading plate in their brains. The ensuing detection won't win any prizes: formula plotting, with a solution that's part ancient-clich‚ (the Who) and part Ross Macdonald (the Why). Still, for those who enjoy future-nightmares, Bear is always ready to slow down the sleuthing and observe the grim social scenery: rampant suicide, all-synthetic food (a real apple's $20 a bite), topless fashions, slum conditions on Madison and Park, no more California (fell off into the sea), etc. An odd, fairly stylish cross-breed, then, which will probably win the full attention of neither mystery lovers nor sf fans.

Pub Date: Nov. 23, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION