“D.W.St.John demonstrates a huge range of talent in his latest
page turner…a sensitively drawn synthesis of desire, beauty, horror…thoughtful,
thoroughly terrifying view of the future.” NPR

“…climax is genuinely gripping…an entertaining combination of hard-boiled
action, futuristic romance and speculation about biotechnology.”
Publishers Weekly

Karl Latte doesn’t like the twenty-first century. Not recombinants, not
Ultimate Reality, not Digitally Mastered Immortals. He doesn’t like that people are
disappearing, or that he stands to lose the only thing in the world that matters to
him. Most of all he dislikes the talent he was born with, the talent that’s damned
him—the ability to see into minds.
A forty-year-old ex-cop with bad knees and an arrhythmic heart, he may
be the last man in 2030 L.A. without a satcom implanted deep in his cortex. 21st
century Luddite with the skills of a gun-for-hire blackmailed back to take over a case
that’s left nine agents parted out, he is at once scrambling for his life.
The assignment takes him to Plat 66, a sea platform owned by the genetic
conglomerate, Genesistems. His task: find Romy, one of the last surviving firstgeneration
recombinants. Tall, slender, gifted, she's the apogee of genetic perfection—
everything he loathes in a woman.
All Karl wants is to go home—but before he can he’s got to get Romy off
the plat alive. Easier said than done. Genesystems wants them dead, the Army of
God is hell-bent to sink the plat, a sadistic cabal is murdering Sisters two a night,
and a 21st century demon lurks just out of sight, craving possession of them both.
Most alarming for Karl, as he grows to know this appealing patented life
form, he finds his most cherished prejudices teetering as his concept of what is
human and what is not skews bewilderingly.