Necropolis

November 1, 2011
This debut novel delivers an inventive mixture of near-future sf and noir crime. Paul Donner, an NYPD detective who was shot down in a holdup, is brought back to life five decades later. This isn't as stunning as it might sound: in the future, people are revived all the time, due to the Shift, a world-altering event that came with a mixed bag of consequences, including the fact that deceased people can be revived, but they're now aging in reverse, their bodies getting younger, providing a sort of built-in time limit for the revived. Paul, feeling adrift in an unfamiliar world (New York has a distinctly noirish feel, but behind the retro look is some seriously high-tech stuff), determines to find out who's responsible for his death and stumbles into a conspiracy that shocks him to the core. With a smart, suspenseful story and a cast of cleverly designed charactersincluding Maggie, Paul's sidekick, a babe who would be at home in a Raymond Chandler novel, except for the fact that she's a computer-generated hologramthe book is sure to appeal to mystery lovers, sf fans, and various shadings in between.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)