In the Cube: A Novel of Future Boston

Carl Hays

On one level, Smith's latest registers as a fairly standard, Hammett-style detective novel following investigator Beverly O'Meara as she tracks down a powerful Boston politician's missing daughter. On the level of pure science fiction, however, Smith dazzles us with a kaleidoscopic future landscape full of eccentric aliens and clever technological marvels ranging from holographic fashionwear to ubiquitous robot video recorders. O'Meara's native territory is a late-twenty-first-century Boston that has seceded from the U.S. and enclosed itself in a one-kilometer-square cube. Along with her sidekick, Akktri, a beaverlike, past-and-future-reading alien, O'Meara encounters a long line of colorful allies and antagonists as she unravels an increasingly complex mystery and ultimately confronts her own tragic past. Smith is a brilliant stylist who pulls off the rare feat of providing credible dimensions both to his characters and to their richly imagined surroundings. A virtuoso performance that should easily place "In the Cube" among the best sf novels of 1993.

Kirkus Reviews

Science-fiction detective yarn set in a medium-future Boston literally crawling with weird aliens: Smith's hardcover debut. Twenty-first-century Boston has been the site of momentous events: alien contact (involving dozens of species) and the establishment of an interstellar portal, the US government's challenge of Boston's subsequent monopoly of interstellar trade, a dreadful siege followed by independence from the US in all but name. Physically, the city has become a gigantic enclosed cube, outside of which most residents never venture. Now, Diana, the adopted daughter of City Operator Iris Sherwood, has gone missing; Sherwood calls in private detective Beverley O'Meara and her partner, Akktri, a furry alien Phner. Despite her misgivings (Beverley blames Sherwood for the death of her father during the Siege), Beverley takes the job—and immediately earns the enmity of persons high up in the Boston power structure; she learns that what seemed to be a case of kidnap and blackmail actually hinges on a mother/daughter love/hate relationship. In resolving the case, Beverley gains new insights into her Phner partner and his alien motivations. Hard-working, inventive, and colorful, but also uncontrolled—with far too many different aliens, improbable sleuthing, and a general air of futuristic soap opera.