Description:

It's the 21st century and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too -- the companies possess all the best hardware, and they're calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine. A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who's psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry -- and late of the English Army's Mindstar Battalion. As the cartels battle for control of a revolutionary new power source, and corporate greed outstrips national security, tension is mounting to boiling point -- and Greg Mandel is about to face the ultimate test.

From Publishers Weekly

Critically acclaimed in his native England for four novels, all SF, Hamilton makes his stateside debut with the novel that launched his writing career and that begins his Greg Mandel trilogy. Set in a 21st-century England recovering from massive global warming, the story reads like a collaboration between William Gibson and Ian Fleming. Freelance operative Mandel is a veteran of the Mindstar Battalion, whose men received telepathic powers via implanted glands. Now he is the ally of the teenage heiress of a high-tech industrial empire, Julia Evans, in a desperate battle against Kendric di Girolamo, a ruthless and obsessed financier, and Leopold Armstrong, former leftist dictator of England, who is trying to regain power. Plenty of action, exotic hardware (particularly computers), urban grunge, double handfuls of eccentric, decadent or criminal characters and enough willing women to raise the eyebrows of the politically correct hallmark this fast-moving tale. SF fans may particularly enjoy, as a change of pace, experiencing a vision of the future that coheres but that takes its clues from British, rather than American, society and history.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Published in England in 1993, this first book in the Greg Mandel trilogy introduces us to an England suffering from the environmental and political effects of global warming, an energy crisis, and a credit crash. Mandel, an assassin, is hired to protect a teenage corporate heiress. As Mandel goes through his paces, Hamilton fully describes the devastated countryside and political machinations in a country struggling to cope in a bleak future. Recommended for sf collections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.