A chameleonlike parahuman, created in a secret project, discovers grotesque crimes and mutations in future Phoenix, Arizona, in Hetzel’s SF series starter.

Agent 42 is the creation of a secret U.S. government project in a vaguely described post-catastrophe future America. He and those like him are cyber-enhanced, resilient, and able to shape-shift; they go on missions involving impersonating people and infiltrating enemy organizations. But Agent 42’s latest mission, masquerading as an Albanian gangster, seems to go badly wrong: Technologically advanced attackers descend on the criminals’ hideout and massacre everyone in sight, apparently seeking Agent 42. The hero escapes into the netherworld of Phoenix, but he stays in touch with his Agency handlers as he stumbles on numerous horrors. For example, a new drug called Green Tar physically transforms and mutates addicts in the manner of a virus; a messianic/apocalyptic cult implants its members with surveillance chips; and a curious network of tunnels runs underneath the metropolis, some holding cannibalistic marauders. Along the way, Agent 42 finds cryptic philosophical messages apparently left for him in unlikely locations (“We are all guilty of existence. We must all plead our case before the court of history”). He believes he’s being hunted, but is it all a cruel training exercise, an elaborate loyalty test, or an internal purge meant to kill him? Readers are tipped off rather early that Agent 42’s “mindsculpted” superior perceptions may not be feeding him the most accurate information about what is really happening to him. Fans weaned on Philip K. Dick’s conspiracies-within-conspiracies brand of SF paranoia or Robert Ludlum’s identity-scrambled spy thrillers should enjoy this caper in spite of—or perhaps because of—its more extreme splatterpunk elements. Future installments should determine whether the author is spreading out an elaborate puzzle plot or a simpler gallery of horrors. Along the way, the story explores perennial questions that genre fans are sure to find familiar, including such topics as what it means to be human—or at least quasi-human.

A violent, hallucinatory espionage tale that repeatedly leaves readers questioning its protagonist’s reality.