BookList - Carl Hays
Baird's first novel, "Crashcourse" (1993), got rave reviews for leaping headlong into well-heeled cyberpunk territory and delivering a gripping story with unrelenting panache. Here, with slightly less enthralling results, Baird recalls the same cast, from perpetually wisecracking heroine Cassandra Blaine to her aesthetically inclined lover, Moke, and their diabolically mercenary brother-in-arms, Swordfish. Back as well are their almost surrealistic surroundings, in which the entertainment of choice is movies that are felt as well as seen and whose stars earn millions at the risk of being killed. When Cassandra's former costar, presumed brutally murdered in a previous movie, reappears in the flesh but with no recognition of her and Moke, the team reunites to investigate a trail of corrupt producers and underground radical surgery. As in "Crashcourse", the action is explosive. Baird's occasionally frenetic shorthand prose unfortunately makes the first novel required reading for full appreciation of the second, but no one can fault her ingenious originality. First-rate entertainment.