Richard Paul Russo
Otago Daily Times, Best Books 2011
Much of my reading is dictated by what lies buried in the shelves of my favourite second hand shop, and this year I chanced upon a one-volume edition of Richard Paul Russo’s Carlucci trilogy. Set in a sordid and sweltering near-future San Francisco, these loosely-linked novels combine the dark vision of Bladerunner, a dash of William Gibson, and the best traditions of the police procedural to produce a vivid and shocking glimpse of a frightening and all to plausible future. The slums of Russo’s teeming city are packed with the poor and disenfranchised, those addicted to a vast array of pharmaceutical and technological stimuli, and members of strange and grotesque social cults. Yet even here, where life is cheap and death an occupational hazard, good people continue to fight for justice where they can. It may be a cliché, but this was a book I really couldn’t put it down.
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