44. Snake Agent

By: Liz Williams

Detective Inspector Chen's latest case is to find a missing girl. The problem is, that the missing girl is dead. That wouldn't be so unusual, except that her death isn't the mystery- its what happened to her after she died- and that wouldn't be as unusual, except that its not her body that is missing, its her ghost.

Detective Chen is The Singapore 3 (Singapore is now a chain city) police department's Snake Agent, the one who deals with their supernatural cases.

SA is an interesting book, the problem is that it crosses too many genres. Its sort of Blade Runner, meets The Matrix meets John Constantine. If that sounds like a lot of genre bending, let's remember that Blade Runner is also Film Noir meets Sci Fi, The Matrix is cyberpunk meets hong kong action.

In other words, Snake Agent is a Hard-Boiled-Sci-Fi-Cyberpunk-Kung-Fu-Film-Noir-Fire-and-Brimstone-Fantasy. Theres even a little Lovecraft "ancient gods" thing thrown in there for good measure.

Yes, its a little too much of everything.

The universe that Williams' creates is so dependent on all of these different worlds working together, which I'm not entirely sure that they do. The cyberpunk theme gets kind of lost in the middle, the Noir comes and goes. The Constantine-in-Asia thing gets most of the attention, and some of the other pieces just get distracting.

The characters are familiar and flat, and talk in smart dialog as if they expect to be in a movie version soon.

That being said, the book is still an enjoyable read. The plot is certainly original, the smart dialog is... smart. I'm not sure that I'll run out to get the next "Inspector Detective Chen" novel, but if it looks like it finds its ground a little better, I could be persuaded to pick it up.