Dead Lines Greg Bear 9780007129775

Ring, ring. You're dead.

We were all there in that city that draws its paycheck from the manufacture of ghosts, itself made of ghosts: Los Angeles. We were there when one man started handing out free talk. And we are there now, sad little dolls made of dust...

Peter Russell lost a daughter to a serial killer. His marriage was the next casualty. Now he gets by as Mr Fixit for a film millionaire with a young wife on a big Hollywood estate infamous for its association with a historical scandal. The millionaire invests in a new kind of phone, the Trans. The problem with the Trans is that not only can you talk to your friends on it, you can also talk to the dead - though that wasn't part of the design spec.

The Trans accesses forbidden channels. It has disrupted the exit routines of the recently dead to wherever they should have gone. At first, Russell is only haunted by his dead daughter. Now there are phantoms everywhere. Many are ghosts of the living, people with nothing inside them, called wraiths.

A cascade of transgression and murder is unleashed as sales of the Trans take off. Harried near to death himself by his murdered child, Russell must find out who killed her and find a way to put an end to it all, if it kills him.

Greg Bear was born in 1951 and published his first short story sixteen years later. His first novel was published in 1979, and his most famous novels, Blood Music and Eon, emerged during the eighties and have now become established classics.

'Praise for Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children

A gripping evolutionary thriller that combines cutting-edge science with a compelling storyline. It's a novel that stretches the envelope of known science - which is exactly what science fiction should do' P.D. Smith Guardian

'Bear's ability to tell a good story is surpassed only by his enthusasiam for the advancing edge of molecular biology ... he might just be anticipating the next giant leap in our understanding of evolution and ourselves' Nature

'GREG BEAR develops his characters extremely well, and there is plenty of action, too, in Darwin's Children ... Bear is very good at blending hard science, politics and fiction, and this is one of his strongest novels yet. Convincing, and at times depressing, it tackles the difficult question of whether a government gripped by prejudice and fear can be prevented from wiping out its perceived enemies' New Scientist