I like Colin Harrison. Gritty, down to earth. This book tells the story of a rising corporate executive, who lost his wife and unborn baby in a random act of street violence. Drawn into a megamedia merger, he falls for a young mother and her daughter without realizing how much baggage both she and he carry. Some good plot twists, some predictable. ( )

"My name is Jack Whitman and I should never have had the first thing to do with her."
- Colin Harrison, Bodies Electric

Colin Harrison's novel is not only a thriller but a study in sociology, psychology and cross cultural collisions, a novel of hard-boiled language and fast-paced action. As way of example, here are several quotes from the opening pages:

Thriller - "My name is Jack Whitman and I should never have had the first thing to do with her - not with what was happening at the Corporation at the time. But I'm as weak hearted for love and greedy for power as the next guy, maybe more so. And I was crazy for the sex - of course that was part of it." Jack Whitman is the first-person narrator and this is how the novel opens, an opening Raymond Chandler and his fictional private-eye Phillip Marlow would appreciate.

Sociology - "And it was equally clear that if the woman had been dressed in a pair of tight jeans and cheap red pumps, she might be a New York-born Puerto Rican whore addicted to self-destruction, carrying a purse filed with rubbers and wrinkled bills and selling herself to all comers at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, a woman who, despite providence's gift of fine bones and large, deep eyes, was forced to love life faster and harder than was ever meant." The author has Jack Whitman make pointed, telling and sometimes scathing observations about society on nearly every page.

Psychology - "Morrison, second in command in the Corporation, the man everyone feared . . . . Morrison had lost half a leg and most of a hand as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, having survived, he had the confidence of five men. Combat had shown him that we are all merely walking bags of meat, and once a man has decided that, all manner of brilliant scheming becomes possible." Indeed, Harrison's novel is a study in corporate psychology. One could argue Bodies Electric should be required reading for anybody contemplating a career in the business world, particularly the American business world.

Cross-Cultural Collisions - "What is certain is that as Liz waited for the light, a silver BMW with tinted windows . . . pulled over and someone poked the short metal barrel of a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol over the electric window and started shooting. . . . Liz was right in the way of it." Liz was Jack Whitman's beautiful young pregnant wife and both Liz and her seven month old daughter in the womb were killed by a Harlem gang's bullets. New York City aka the Big Apple as the American melting pot on speed. Harrison loves the city (and he said so directly in an interview) and captures NYC's hyper-energizing hum.

The characters play for high stakes, as well they should, since they are each caught in an emotionally-charged net of circumstances and faced with life and death choices. Regarding our main character, Jack Whitman - he sees the twenty-something cinnamon-skinned beauty with her little four-year-old girl on the subway in two ways: as Madonna and Child and as an exotic sexually-charged object of desire.

In the aftermath of his tragic loss, the magnetic pull is too powerful to resist (one way to think of Whitman's attraction is in terms of Carl Jung's archetype, the "anima"). Whitman hands her his business card and offers help, which turns out to be the first step in a series of events swirling himself and others in unexpected and sometimes dark, violent directions. For my money, Bodies Electric is a modern classic.


American author Colin Harrison, born 1960, has had a lifelong fascination with New York City - the energy with which he writes about the Big Apple shines through on every page. ( )

Colin Harrison's novel is not only a thriller but a study in sociology, psychology and cross cultural collisions, a novel of hard-boiled language and fast-paced action. As way of example, here are several quotes from the opening pages:

Thriller - "My name is Jack Whitman and I should never have had the first thing to do with her - not with what was happening at the Corporation at the time. But I'm as weak hearted for love and greedy for power as the next guy, maybe more so. And I was crazy for the sex - of course that was part of it." Jack Whitman is the first-person narrator and this is how the novel opens, an opening Raymond Chandler and his fictional private-eye Phillip Marlow would appreciate.

Sociology - "And it was equally clear that if the woman had been dressed in a pair of tight jeans and cheap red pumps, she might be a New York-born Puerto Rican whore addicted to self-destruction, carrying a purse filed with rubbers and wrinkled bills and selling herself to all comers at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, a woman who, despite providence's gift of fine bones and large, deep eyes, was forced to love life faster and harder than was ever meant." The author has Jack Whitman make pointed, telling and sometimes scathing observations about society on nearly every page.

Psychology - "Morrison, second in command in the Corporation, the man everyone feared . . . . Morrison had lost half a leg and most of a hand as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, having survived, he had the confidence of five men. Combat had shown him that we are all merely walking bags of meat, and once a man has decided that, all manner of brilliant scheming becomes possible." Indeed, Harrison's novel is a study in corporate psychology. One could argue Bodies Electric should be required reading for anybody contemplating a career in the business world, particularly the American business world.

Cross-Cultural Collisions - "What is certain is that as Liz waited for the light, a silver BMW with tinted windows . . . pulled over and someone poked the short metal barrel of a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol over the electric window and started shooting. . . . Liz was right in the way of it." Liz was Jack Whitman's beautiful young pregnant wife and both Liz and her seven month old daughter in the womb were killed by a Harlem gang's bullets. New York City aka the Big Apple as the American melting pot on speed. Harrison loves the city (and he said so directly in an interview) and captures NYC's hyper-energizing hum.

The characters play for high stakes, as well they should, since they are each caught in an emotionally-charged net of circumstances and faced with life and death choices. Regarding our main character, Jack Whitman - he sees the twenty-something cinnamon-skinned beauty with her 4 year old girl on the subway in two ways: as Madonna and Child and as an exotic sexually-charged object of desire. In the aftermath of his tragic loss, the magnetic pull is too powerful to resist (one way to think of Whitman's attraction is in terms of Carl Jung's archetype, the `anima'). Whitman hands her his business card and offers help, which turns out to be the first step in a series of events swirling himself and others in unexpected and sometimes dark, violent directions. For my money, Bodies Electric is a modern classic. ( )

Jack Whitman is a lonely VP (his wife had been killed in a drive-by several years earlier) in the “Corporation,” which is the largest media company in the world. One day on the way home he sees a woman and her four-year-old daughter on the subway (no cabs being available in the rain) and as she gets off, gives her his card, saying he could help her with a job. He thinks nothing more of it until she and her daughter arrive at his 39th floor office. She loses the job he gets her within a week. Against his better judgment (I’ll say) he locates the woman again. He finds a place for her to live in a building being remodeled, but the woman's husband discovers her location, trashes the building and they barely escape. So he invites her to stay in his house where he has an empty basement apartment.

In the meantime, there is a coup and counter-coup going on at the “Corporation.” At first I thought all the corporate stuff was getting in the way of the story, but as things progress, you realize that all of that is integral to defining who Jack is. Rather than supply additional details and litter my review with spoilers, I’ll just note that for me the book was a meditation on what it means to be a family and how members of families interact (or don’t) under external and personal pressures.

The technology is dated (wow, a 256 megabyte chip - that’s huge), but the human interactions and conflict are not. Harrison writes really well and the sense of foreboding clutches at the reader throughout driving one forward toward the conclusion. This is the third Harrison I’ve read, and he’s now on the must-read list. ( )

Harrison crafts a gripping tale of a corporate executive trying to find his way years after his pregnant wife is gunned down indiscriminately. Bodies Electric gives readers an inside peek at the ruthlessness of big business politics and a man's mission to find meaning to his life with unexpected results. ( )