Passion Play

1992 Canada paperback Tesseract Books,Italy paperback Casa Editrice Nord, as Angelo Nero (Dark Angel), 1994 USA paperback Ace Books

Passion Play

The Redemption Presidency has transformed America. Adulterers are stoned. Executions are televised. But sin still exists. And so does murder…

Beach Holme (Tesseract) cover blurb: It is a dark time. The great cities are dying, like the country, from the heart out. The Redemption Presidency tolerates vigilantes who kill according to Biblical example. The police subcontract freelancers to bring in criminals for quick and televised execution.

Diane Fletcher is one of these freelancers: a “shaper” cursed with the gift of seeing and feeling the emotions of others. Armed with hunter skills, she takes on the mysterious death of Jonathan Mask, a great actor found electrocuted in the costume of a demon. But even a shaper can become lost in the human labyrinth, where patterns of innocence, guilt, passion and deception lead inevitably into that treacherous territory between justice and vengeance.

  • 1992 Aurora Award, Best Canadian Science Fiction or Fantasy novel of the year in English
  • 1992 Arthur Ellis Award (Crime Writers of Canada), Best First Novel

“This Cyberpunk saga of a lady P.I… in a not-so-distant future is, quite simply, terrific… The story isn’t the usual rant against religion. This is a much more textured, much deeper tale of temptation and death.”—Toronto Globe & Mail

“A novel so subtle and layered with meaning, that works on so many levels at once… simply has no business being this compulsively readable. Passion Play is one of the best first novels I’ve ever read.”—Spider Robinson, author of the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series

« Back to Sean’s novels