A dirty bomb in Times Square and the death of his wife were reason enough for Spademan to turn his back on the good in humanity and go from garbage man to contract killer. His latest hit, Lesser, spends his time in the Limn, a sort of Matrix for aware humans, peeking in on other peoples sexual fantasies, so there are enough suspects who may have hired Spademan to wipe Lesser off the planet. When he arrives at Lesser's house to kill him, but before he can carry out his contract, Lesser awakens having seen the impossible, the killing of a Limn avatar which also killed the real sleeping human...

Near Enemy (2015. 306 Pages) is the follow up post apocalyptic noir novel from Adam Sternbergh’s Shovel Ready (2014).

The novel opens a year following the events of the previous book, with Spademan harbouring Persephone and her new child, whilst Simon the Magician is trying to hold onto his power base and get Persephone back.

What stops Spademan from just carrying out his contract is that Lesser not only saw the killing, but also saw that the killing was undertaken by a female in a traditional Islamic dress. The possibility that this may connect to the same group which exploded a dirty bomb in New York and so killed his wife is enough to stay his hand. However his search for answers creates a unique position for him. Instead of just having victims, he now has enemies.

If anything the follow up novel surpasses the first. Sternbergh still writes in a terse minimalist style, which leaves little room for descriptive passages, indeed many of the pages if stepped back from could be mistaken for lists. Did I miss the long winded explanations of just how brown bricks were or the colour of the sky? Decidedly not. Not because these are not important for world building, but because New York is a well enough landmark from other media, like film, that all I really need to know is that it has all gone to hell to picture it in my own mind.

The style is somewhat different as well, which also explains the lack of description. The novel is almost entirely told from Spademan’s point of view. Reading the novel gives an experience not dissimilar to having the character actually relating events first hand, so you get some descriptions of characters bodily movements or reactions, but almost none of the "she said" / "he said" which normally would punctuate a sentence.

It does make for a fast paced novel. I’d probably recommend you read Shovel Ready first, but it’s not a requirement as the book works very well as a stand-alone novel.

8

Charles Packer