Flashback

DAN SIMMONS

Synopsis from Goodreads: The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result.

Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past.

A provocative novel set in a future that seems scarily possible, FLASHBACK proves why Dan Simmons is one of our most exciting and versatile writers.

Stats for my copy: Hardback, Large Print; Reagan Arthur Books; 2011

How acquired: Bought.

My thoughts: I bought this book at a library sale solely because I loved the cover, even though it is very much outside my usual reading genre. And it was good. It was interesting. At times it was a little tedious. And the last quarter of the book was enthralling, which bumped my rating up a star. I liked Nick Bottom, the flashback addicted ex-cop, despite the fact that he'd dumped his son and more or less forgotten about him. I liked Val, a tough kid on the outside, running with a flashgang, worrying his grandfather, hating his old man, vulnerable on the inside, missing his mom, hurt that his dad didn't even call him on his birthday. And the dystopian future setting is just realistic enough to imagine our world actually turning out this way.