Skinjob (Bruce McCabe, Random House)

Skinjob is the debut novel from former Australian technology columnist Bruce McCabe. In a not-too-distant future, FBI special agent Daniel Madsen is investigating the bombing of a ‘dollhouse’ in San Francisco. Dollhouses are brothels renting out the services of eerily realistic robots—the eponymous ‘skinjobs’. Is the bombing domestic terrorism by religious fundamentalists or feminist activists? Are global corporations using extremists to disguise their war over a bigger slice of the Dollhouse pie? Madsen is a ‘plotter’ who uses an H.A.M.D.A (a handheld lie detector) as part of his toolkit. Sergeant Shahida Sanayei, a surveillance officer for the San Francisco Police Department, becomes his unwilling sidekick as they dig through hours of surveillance (you cannot avoid cameras in McCabe’s dystopia), and the layers of political, sociological and moral questions posed by the ‘skinjobs’. The book doesn’t suffer from an overuse of descriptions as a lot of debut novels do, and it’s gripping enough to keep you interested in the whodunit aspect. However, the two main characters are fairly one-dimensional, so hopefully they’ll be fleshed out in part two (the book’s finale suggests the probability of a sequel).

Viki Dun is editor of Gleebooks’ Gleaner

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Category: Reviews