cover image Patriot Future

Patriot Future

Milton Johns. Presidio Press, $21.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-89141-581-7

The future, according to this stiffly written and predictable first thriller, looks pretty grim. The landslide election victory by the New Liberty Party in 2004 at first seemed a triumph: when all narcotics were legalized in 2005, drug-related crime immediately decreased by 50%. But before the cops could even catch their breath, a new drug from China called jazz--which, in addition to providing the hallucinogenic high of LSD, bestows telekinetic powers on one in a thousand users--caused havoc. Now it's 2021, and Detective Matt Sheridan of the Federal Police Force is up to his futuristic butt in trouble, deep in the San Diego Emergency Zone--an area unsafe even for police officers, jam-packed with felons because the prisons are too crowded. Sheridan, a decorated Marine hero from the Battle of Karachi, likes to shoot perps in the right elbow and left kneecap, so they won't shoot back or run away. His sterling attitude catches the eye of ambitious superiors, who move him to the Washington, D.C., area to infiltrate a rebel party called the Confederation of American Patriots. The bad guys turn out to be the good guys, and Sheridan discovers a secret about jazz that won't surprise a 12-year-old. Johns's future is robustly imagined, but the action is thick with awkward technophilia and the characters bleed patriotic cliches. (July)