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Adult Books - Fiction - General Fiction
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Super-Cannes.
Ballard, J. G. (author).
Oct. 2001. 400p. Picador, hardcover, $25 (0-312-30223-3).
REVIEW.
First published September 15, 2001 (Booklist).
The casinos and elegant hotels of the Cote d’Azur are being rapidly overtaken by the motorways and state-of-the-art business parks of a new, high-tech Riviera. Eden-Olympia, latest and greatest of the latter, is the environment that the convalescing Paul Sinclair enters when his wife, Jane, a physician, takes a position recently vacated by one Dr. Greenwood, who was killed after going on a killing spree. While Jane works, Paul investigates Greenwood’s motivations and begins to see that there might be justification for his rampage. Soon Paul is under the spell of charismatic psychiatrist Wilder Penrose, who prescribes a sort of weekend fascism for his elite clientele. As in Ballard’s Cocaine Nights (1998), the protagonist investigates an inexplicable crime and uncovers startling secrets involving illicit drug use, pedophilia, sadomasochism, and organized beatings of immigrants. Like his Crash (1973), Ballard’s new novel teems with car parks, automobiles, and other signs of urban sprawl. Ballard’s dystopian vision, frightening and provocative, vividly depicts a postindustrial society in which psychopathy isn’t just the norm. It is a driving force. — Ben Segedin
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