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The Electric Church by Jeff Somers
01/03/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
Pub: Orbit. 363 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 9.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84149-615-3. Buy The Electric Church in the USA - or Buy The Electric Church in the UK  check out website: www.orbitbooks.co.uk and www.the-electric-church.com
Set a few years into our future, the world is falling apart. If you're not pestered by members of the Electric Church to join their order of monks, then you can risk being killed by gunners who might assassinate you for a price. The world is rough and you need money to survive.
Gunner Avery Cates is in trouble. As an assassin, he frequently is. Only this time, he's killed a couple pigs...all right, System Pigs, the slang name for officers belonging to the System Security Force and now forced to keep out of their way as well, especially as a few of them are eager for his blood. He's also been given a new commission only this comes from Dick Marrin, the head of the SSF himself. The target: Dennis Squalor, the head of the Electric Church. To do this, Cates is going to need a team who each, as he discovers, has their own agendas to fulfil along the way.
'The Electric Church' is written in first person perspective of Avery Cates himself so we're treated only to his perspective of events which swings in a reality somewhere between 'Blade Runner' and...that's a very good question, maybe the Deep Throat sequences of 'The X-Files' as Marrin crops up at the most needed times to lead away from a terminal perspective when Cates needs a helping hand.
The real problem of writing in first person is just how much does the author allow the reader to get inside the lead character's head. The emotional content is somewhat stilted. Whether that can be put down to Cates' professional mindset or he's just emotional drained will have to be left to the individual reader. Had the book been written in third person, we might have seen more of the other characters which were interesting in their own right if not for their professions as well.
This shouldn't deter you from reading this book, especially as this is supposed to be the start of a series. Perhaps we'll see more of this world then the key religion and the police force. It's certainly worth investigating.
GF Willmetts
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