Deadstock
by Jeffrey Thomas
Ace Books, $7.99, 414 pp

This is the sixth book in the Punktown setting. As far as I can tell, the other books deal with different characters and situations.

In Deadstock, Jeremy Stake is a private detective who has the ability to change his shape to mimic anyone he looks at long enough. He has no control over this ability making it both a blessing and a curse.

He is hired by Mr. Fukuda to find his daughter’s doll. However, this is no ordinary doll; it is a bio-engineered life form. It is unique and quite valuable, making the suspect list fairly large. Number one on the list is Krimson Tableau. Besides a petty teen-age rivalry between the girls, their fathers are competitors in the Deadstock industry. Deadstock being the term for bio-engineered food animals that exist without heads or legs – just the meaty goodness the customers want.

Of course, it isn’t a simple matter of talking to Krimson and finding out if she took the doll, because she is missing too. And according to her friends they have heard her over their Ouija phones. The Ouija phones are popular with the kids in Punktown as they are reputed to allow one to talk with the dead. As it turns out, Krimson’s friends have been in contact with her since shortly after her disappearance.

Running concurrently with this plot line we follow the Folger Street Snarlers; a local gang. One of their members is killed in the opening chapter and the gang sets out to find out what happened to him and get revenge, if necessary. They are able to track him down to a set of abandoned luxury apartments and are immediately set upon by what appears to be statues that occupy a space along side each apartment. Now they are trapped and must find a way to escape.

Both story-lines are connected in a way that doesn’t become clear until much later in the novel. There are also flashbacks to Stake’s days in the military and a love affair he had with one of the enemy. This is connected to his current affair and pays off in an interesting observation into the main character.

The first couple of chapters gave me some trouble, I found the text a little awkward at times, but Thomas tightens it up and the rest of the book really hooked me and prodded me to keep reading.

What really stood out for me was the feel of the book which reminded me of Bladerunner. That is not to be mistaken as a charge that this story is a copy of the Bladerunner plot or even necessarily the world described there, but its essence is the same. We have a futuristic setting, heavily influenced by Asian culture, dark and gritty, corrupt, and dealing with manufactured life forms. Whereas Bladerunner is the tale of the humans left back on a decaying Earth, this story is about that portion of humanity that has fled to the stars. But make no mistake, Thomas has injected so much more of his own invention into the milieu - the Ouija phones for instance.

This was more than a good read, it was a story that I wanted to keep on reading until I was done. It made me interested in reading more of the Punktown novels and I believe I will. I highly recommend this book. - Randy Lindsay