The Nervous System

May 14, 2012
In Larson’s near-future crime debut, The Dewey Decimal System (2011), the eponymous hero, a former soldier once subjected to experimental enhancements that left him with a fragmented memory, tried to restore order to the New York Public Library in a city decimated by terrorist attacks. In this frenetic follow-up, Decimal busies himself retrieving and hiding files of sensitive information from the office of his former boss, DA Daniel Rosenblatt, who’s been dead for six weeks. “I should know. I shot the man myself,” Decimal admits. U.S. Sen. Clarence Howard, apparently unaware Rosenblatt is dead, threatens Decimal into trying to locate Rosenblatt. Seeking leverage, Decimal finds it in a photo of Howard with a Korean prostitute. Decimal’s frantic attempt to learn the girl’s fate leads him into hostile Korean and Chinese enclaves as well as battles with troops and police in Howard’s employ. Larson’s vividly imagined world and his quirky narrator are likely to win him a cadre of loyal fans.

June 1, 2012
Award-winning film composer Larson (The Dewey Decimal System, 2011) returns with another episode in the life of a man dubbed "Dewey Decimal." This time the amnesiac hero (he's a veteran and a bagman, too) has to deal with the fallout from killing dirty District Attorney Daniel Rosenblatt, his old employer. Have no doubt, Dewey is a seriously weird dude, obsessed with Purell, the systematic organization of the books back at the crib (The New York Public Library, where he resides), nursing the limp that came from having his kneecap blown off, and generally trying to survive in a world that's been unraveled from manifold disasters. "Lest you've already diagnosed me as a hopeless psychopath, irredeemable, I do have a Code," Dewey protests. "Which sets me apart from the bulk of the animals in this town and elsewhere." Back at his old boss' office six weeks later (Dewey broke in looking for evidence), he runs across a wealth of blackmail material that brings him into the orbit of two disparate groups vying for position: on the one hand, boss Kwon-Man Seok and the town's Korean community (lucky Dewey, who believes he was the subject of invasive government experiments, speaks Korean) and on the other, the Cyna-corps stormtroopers, a corporation that has taken vertical integration all the way from janitorial services to military-murderers-for-hire. As is the case with Charlie Huston's vampire books, the plot is secondary to the whiplash prose, teeth-gnashing dialogue and post-civilization concepts that make a crazy (amateur) librarian in a pitch-black world a hell of a lot of fun for a few hours. A good time for fans of the likes of Charlie Huston and Charles Stross.

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