A Son of the Rock

Gollancz, 2006

This is a slightly different cover from the copy I read – where the Times comment given was, “Compelling Entertainment.”

Bobby Zha, a San Francisco detective with Chinese ancestry and the obligatory failed marriage, is murdered while on a case. He sees a nine tailed fox – a ghost from Chinese myth – and knows he’s dead. He then mysteriously wakes up in New York in the long comatose (since childhood) body of Robert Vanberg, now a wealthy man. He returns to San Fran and posing variously as a CIA, FBI or White House agent sets to investigating his own death and sorting out the case he was working on at the time he was killed.

It’s a neat SF idea, having a character delve into the circumstances of his own death. The problem with this is that until the last two chapters that’s the only SF element present and hence for most of the book there seems no adequate reason for it. Apart from that we have a pretty straightforward thriller. No sweat there, it’s what Grimwood has made himself good at – big on plot and violence.

I had some minor irritations: despite the US setting and points of view, Grimwood repeatedly uses the word knickers for a woman’s underwear and has characters use the epithet “a shit” about others, along with other British usages. As a result I didn’t really feel I was reading about Americans. Amusingly, there is also the quite magnificent malapropism of proprietaries for proprieties. Sadly, there was a span count of 1.

While it doesn’t match the peak of Stamping Butterflies, in 9Tail Fox Grimwood delivers what you would expect from reading others of his ouevre. If you like his writing you won’t be disappointed.