Other Fantasy Fiction Categories, Detective Fiction, Social Science Fiction

The Stranger

Name: The Stranger
Author: Eric J. Fullilove
ISBN: 9780553575767

by Eric J. Fullilove

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Overview

In a troubled future, the search for redemption may carry the stiffest price of all.

A teenage boy is found dead in the Los Angeles city subway with no identity—no prints, no records, nothing on file—an unusual, fatal fugitive from the digital age. Such a crime may prove the perfect opportunity for Jenny Sixa to escape the pampered, empty life she's been leading and go back to one last time to the grisly underworld she can enter only through her telepathy. But this body has no last memories for her to probe, even at the limits of her abilities. Worse, Jenny is becoming haunted by a predator who broadcast his thoughts as he attacks innocent women on the streets. There's nowhere to turn as the next dead teenager is found, and the next, and the next. . .

Is there a link between The Stranger who haunts Jenny's dreams and the dead boys who haunt her days? And will she be able to save one final victim from destruction even as the enormity of the stakes are revealed? For if she fails, all of humanity may pay the price.

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Editorials

VOYA - Sarah Flowers

Jenny Sixa is a "capable"-a telepath-living in Los Angeles in the mid-twenty-first century. Since the events of Circle of One (Bantam, 1996), she has been living a luxurious life on the money she "inherited" from her last case. But now Jenny is receiving the thoughts of a Stranger, a brutal serial rapist who has some sort of connection to Jenny's mind. Then her old friend Derrick Trent of the LAPD calls her in to help on the case of a teenage boy who has been found dead in the subway-with no prints, no identification, nothing on file. Jenny attempts to probe the boy's memory but finds that there is nothing there. Then another boy turns up dead, also unidentified, but DNA links him to an FBI agent's wife-who swears she never had any children. This is essentially a murder mystery set in a cyberpunk version of the future, as Jenny teams up with her AI assistant, Didi, to try to solve the question of the dead boys and their link to the Stranger. There are several brief descriptions of rape, in which Fullilove emphasizes the victim's terror rather than dwells on the physical details. There are also some violent fire-fights and explicit language, both of which are appropriate to the dystopia Fullilove has created here. In addition, there are interesting speculations about the future state of race relations and religion. This is an intriguing book, but not for anyone who is easily shocked or weak of stomach. VOYA Codes: 3Q 3P S (Readable without serious defects, Will appeal with pushing, Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).