The charming, sexy Steve Mosby has said some very nice things about TRG:

The Razor Gate, by Sean Cregan

Or by John Rickards, as some of us know him, but the Cregan name differentiates his vaguely SF, industrial, biohazard noir – this and last year’s The Levels – from his earlier crime thrillers. There’s a danger in reviewing your friends, but The Razor Gate is certainly his best work so far. The plot involves a new serial crime – people (known subsequently as “Clocks”) are abducted at random and implanted with tiny biological bombs that will kill them in exactly one year’s time. They know it, and yet nobody can stop it. It’s an idea ripe with potential both for philosophical reflection and for action, and John delivers both here in spades, as a reporter attempts to discover the truth about the people behind the “curse”, and a rogue cop hunts for the same in order to save his Clock girlfriend. But what impresses even more about the book is the atmosphere and setting: the world-building. It’s all so coherent, so pungent (in a good way), without ever being over-bearing. You frequently want to pause the story and just look around – learn a little more about your surroundings – and the book is so well-realised you get the impression John already knows stories about every location here, no matter how briefly mentioned, and every single character.

Basically, this is great stuff. You should read this. It’s a fucking crime of culture that book 2) – say – is a massive bestseller, whereas this, with all its invention, all its passion and obvious intellectual investment, is not.

Also, I’m using “biohazard noir” from now on.