Short, but another superb stand-alone novel from the master. ( )

F. Paul Wilson is best known for his horror fiction, particularly his bestselling vampires-among-the-Nazis, The Keep. I rather enjoyed that pot-boiler, but I like his LaNague Federation novels much more. This counts as fourth in the series chronologically, and if you're read the others you'll recognize features in the background. But it shares no characters with the other books and can be read as a standalone. In fact, in a lot of ways this makes the best introduction for the general reader. The first three novels, An Enemy of the State, Wheels Within Wheels and Healer are pretty explicitly libertarian science fiction, but here such themes are much more subtle. This takes place on a future Earth with very strict population control laws. You get one child and that's it--even if the child should die soon after birth. You can use your one-child allotment to have a clone--not of yourself necessarily, but say a famous person--this novel involves a clone of Jean Harlow. But they're not considered real people--they're slaves, owned by the person who had them cloned. And "extra" children, "urchins" not authorized by the state are non-persons as well. If their parents try to raise them, they're executed. The parents only option is to give them up to child gangs that live on the streets.

Enter into this world Siggy Dreyer, private eye. This is science-fiction all right, but it's also hard-boiled detective story--or at least its voice is, and I have to admit I don't particularly care for that genre at all, so it took me a while to warm up to this book--but I did in the end: it's a good yarn. ( )

SF Novellas set in a grim, dirty city environment that is at least close to cyberpunk land, if not in it. ( )