Body Politic

Edinburgh 2020: After years of rioting and chaos, during which time the United Kingdom was dissolved into dozens of warring city-states, Edinburgh achieves stability thanks to the Council of City Guardians and their vision of a new Age of Enlightenment. It becomes the Body Politic.The Council's goal of a "perfect" city-where television, private cars, and popular music are banned, and where crime is virtually nonexistent-is shattered when a brutal serial killer is discovered among their ranks. Can the fearsome Ear, Nose and Throat Man be back to his grisly old tricks? The usually complacent Council is forced to turn to the man they demoted years ago-the irreverent, blues-haunted Quintilian Dalrymple-to catch the gruesome killer.From Publishers WeeklyThis bleak, near-future hunt for a vicious serial killer won Britain's Creasy Award for best first novel and should capture admiring attention here as well. In the year 2020, Edinburgh is a virtual city-state (founded on the ideas of Plato's Republic) ruled by a benevolently despotic council riddled with corruption. This highly regimented society has lost most traces of individualism. Gone, too, are televisions, private cars, unsanctioned books and musicAas well as most crime, at least until the reemergence of a serial killer known as the ENT (ear, nose and throat) man for his bizarre attentions to his victims. Shocked by the first murder in five years, the council is desperate enough to bring back disgraced private investigator Quintilian Dalrymple, a jazz-loving iconoclast with previous experience of the ENT man. Johnston's spare style doesn't hinder him from effectively limning a society drastically altered by desperate circumstances, and, at the same, spinning a thoroughly entertaining chase novel. Edinburgh's physical and spiritual transformation makes an intriguing backdrop, while Quint, a private eye of the classic mold contending with inept bureaucrats, corruption and a determined killer, makes a first-rate hero. Offbeat but on target, this is one exciting debut. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsEdinburgh, 2020. The Enlightenment that swept through the city years ago has virtually eliminated crime, along with individuality, spontaneity, blues music, and anything citizens might have wanted to do after the 10 p.m. curfew. So it's a matter of considerable concern when the Public Order Directorate discovers that guardswoman Knox 96, a.k.a. Sarah Spence, has been murdered in a way eerily reminiscent of the Ear, Nose, and Throat Man, whose horrible mutilations still haunt the public memory since his last killing five years ago. Edinburgh's official guardians immediately summon Quintilian Dalrymple, who quit the Directorate to work as a Parks laborer and sometime private eye, to clear up the mystery before it affects the tourist trade. But Quint is reluctant to return to his old job, not only because he's just taken on a private clientKatharine Kirkwood, whose brother Adam has been missing for ten daysbut because he knows the rash of murders that's just beginning isn't the work of the ENT Man, whom he killed himself five years ago in revenge for his lover's death. It looks like Quint and Katharine will have to settle for uncovering a sex-slaves racket, medical-research corruption, and an avenger even more ruthless than Quint en route to realizing that ``in the perfect city, the only way to express free will was to commit murder.'' Forget the rickety, overstuffed plot and you'll see why Johnston's bone-chilling dystopia took Britain's John Creasey Award for the year's best crime debut. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.