The Second Angel
   Philip Kerr
  1999 A Marian Wood Book/Henry Holt & Co., NY USA
   ISBN: 0671024728


In 2069, the world has succumbed to blood plagues with an elite of clean bloods, living in high-security enclaves. On the Moon man has built sex hotels, the largest bank of clean blood & penal colonies. Law-abiding crypto-designer Dallas goes renegade when he cannot save his own family.

Opens up to prison life on the Moon & a marvelous world of interconnected physical & mechanical medical life. Wondrous images of fearsomely familiar futures when pandemics of blood plagues have literally infected 80% of the population. When the grim cycle of disease condemns everyone to a segregation of despair or paranoia.

The Second Angel entices us a bit further down some of the roads we've already started upon, both medically & technologically. Where the most secure facilities in the solar system are blood banks & clean blood has become the world's most valuable commodity. Where people are mugged for their blood. Where our advances in computers have brought about what only the most visionary of today's techno-pundits are glimpsing. When our parameters to the question of what is life are expanded & we have redrawn the parallels between different lifeforms & how they might co-mingle.

Dallas, is a designer of blood banks & all of their security. His only child has one of the rarest of inherited blood disorders & this causes the head of the company for which Dallas works to form suspicions about his resources & reliability. The company develops a plan for his family & it doesn't consult Dallas.

It is a time when a unit of uncontaminated blood is selling for millions of dollar credits; when even a rich, clean-blooded man like Dallas, one of the world's elite 20%, would be pauperized within weeks, thus becoming a security risk himself.

This is a gripper, the technical details are graspable & extremely thought-provoking; Philip Kerr's pace is a steady burning fuse fueled with a solid techno-pyramid throughout the book until its ending which will have your hackles rising.

After my husband had read out loud so many portions of The Second Angel I knew I was going to have to read it. For me it started as a 2 potter & by its climax it was worth a solid 4 teapots leaving us musing & pondering. A real thinker's read

Also by Philip Kerr: A Five-Year Plan, Esau, The Grid, Dead Meat, A Philosophical Investigation, A German Requiem, The Pale Criminal and March Violets.
(04/18/99)

D. H. BROWN
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Staff Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
D. H. BROWN is the author of the critically acclaimed HONOR DUE and the Citizens Warrior Series. The son of missionary parents and with the help his Uncle Sam, he has touched base in more than 40 countries.  In 1986 he produced the independent children's film Lessie's Rainbow.  During the late 80s and early 90s, he wrote the book Common Sense and delivered the seminars of the same name for the Community Action Network of Seattle (CAN).  While doing his early Vietnam recovery work, he counseled Veterans and spoke widely to men's groups in Washington state, and was a founder of The Lodge of the Wolf.

D. H. BROWN has worked as a Logistics and Weapons Specialist in Viet Nam; day laborer; Director of Security; Armored Car Driver; Police Officer; Professional Hunting Guide; Trapper; Dog Sledder; Homesteader; Truck Driver; General Contractor; Minister; Editor; Writer; Speaker; Restaurateur; Movie Producer; Antique Restoration Specialist; Personal Care Worker; PC Repair Specialist; Computer Instructor; Webmaster and Web Designer. "I write about what I know."

He lives deep in the Pacific Northwest rainforest with his wife, author and editor Rebecca and Buddy Dog, working on his next book.
Visit him at: www.dhbrownbooks.com