Lacey and His Friends

Rating:
Summary: Drake's most intense work
Review: Drake tells us himself in the forward to this set of short stories that they were written in a dark period. Boy, I'll say! Lacy is totally ruthless. Drake does a fine job of inventing crimes in a near future where every action is recorded by the omnipresent camera. Lacey goes after his quarry with a bulldog-like determination that is riveting to read. Lacey is a semi-rehabilitated rapist made cop, who operates according to his own wierd moral sense. If you've read any of Andrew Vachs' Burke novels, you won't want to miss this. Oh yea, the, AND HIS FRIENDS, in the title refers to a couple of light fluff stories added at the end

Rating:
Summary: Yowza!
Review: Now this is a book of the distopian future, combine elements of Gunn With Occaisional Music, 1984, and A Clockwork Orange... Add one VERY hardboiled cop and you get one hell of a collection of stories. Drake combines historical events, a bleak future, and some bleak insights into humanity into an amazing journey. Not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: This set of dark tales about a grim "detective" solving crimes in a bleak oppressive future is truly Drake's best work.
Lacey is a humorless, merciless "rehabilitated" rapist turned investigator who uses the all-seeing surveillance systems of the future to stalk his prey. Along the way he also gains some small measure of revenge against "Big Brother" for the mental emasculation that constituted his rehabilitation. It's too bad that none of Drake's other works come close to matching this level of intensity. Everything else I've read by Drake seems tepid and lame by comparison. Read it. Only 3 stars 'cause there are some really weak non-Lacey stories included to fluff up the word count.