Going, Going, Gone
Jack Womack
Voyager paperback, 224 pages, £6.99
Published December 2000
ISBN 0006511058
Review by Mike Don (2001)

SF novel of alternate worlds and time travel.

At first dibs, a slick noir thriller set in 1968 New York (name checks for The Velvet Underground and Nico, etc). Hero Walter Bullitt is a freelance dirty tricks agent – mind bending substances a specialty – for the USA government; and a man with serious Style.

Then the first penny drops; this is a subtly different, chilling alternate Amerika, one where, say, old time Afrikaaners would feel right at home. On page 110 the penny drops again, as Going, Going, Gone is revealed to be the long-awaited finale to Womack’s Dryco sequence, very definitely tying up the loose ends.

Never mind the plot, uncomplicated and linear; savour rather the word wizardry. Stylemeister supreme, this author can make the English language do handstands without lapsing into pretentiousness or losing the plot’s driving urgency. And savour also, Oh My Brothers, the banality of evil, an AmeriKKKa all too credible in this era of ethnic cleansing.

Powerful message, the better understatement, from another author who, like Bruce Sterling, has journalism on his CV.