Hmmm. I don’t know. THE NIGHT MARKET is the third in Jonathan Moore’s triptych (the author hesitates to call it a series) of life and crime in a near-future and very dystopian San Francisco (the first two being THE POISON ARTIST and Jonathan Moore’s THE DARK ROOM). It starts off with a bang, tries to do too much at once, and ends up in an uncertain, swirling fog that may appeal to some readers, but will leave others wondering about the holes in the story.

Homicide detectives Ross Carver and Jenner are called to a scene by a pair of patrol officers. They had been called to a house where a man was screaming. They investigate and discover a terribly mutilated corpse. As Carver and Jenner slowly begin their own investigation, they are stormed by some kind of federal agents, relieved of the investigation, and hastily run through a mobile decontamination unit whereupon they are injected … and wake up days later, having forgotten the entire incident.

Only vague snatches of what might have occurred still linger in the brain. While they have forgotten what occurred, the reader has not, and it’s very entertaining and well done on the part of the author to have his characters reconstruct what we already know.

To me, that was the exciting part. But as the officers begin to close in on the truth behind the conspiracy (because there is always a top-level high-powered conspiracy in place), the plot begins to loosen and de-focus. If the reason they went through a decon unit was due to some potential biological outbreak, great. But it seems to be more about the upper echelon pulling the strings of the lower, controlling the mass market through manipulated commercialism and brain implants, and the never-ending struggle between those in the know and those who have the power.

There are bright moments in Moore’s work. Characters feel real, dialogue sings, set pieces are well described. It’s almost as if the book either needed to be longer to fully get into the issues Moore wanted to explore, or it needed to be shorter and less ambitious. There’s real potential here and Moore has a very marketable style so I’m sure we’ll see more works from him in the future. Don’t count him out yet. —Mark Rose

Get it at Amazon.