THE MISSING PERSONS LEAGUE

by Frank Bonham ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1976

The oxygen-and vitamin-starved environment of San Diego some years in the future makes Dogtown look like paradise, but you'll recognize resourceful Brian Foster who manages to sidestep involvement with the local gangs while augmenting his prescribed Level Five diet of algaeburgers by growing vegetables and keeping rabbits in a secret, basement ""farm."" Brian's trouble begins when he determines to track down his mother and sister, who disappeared a year before in an apparently patternless epidemic of missing persons. The response to his ad in the Personals column of the local newspaper includes visits from the Environmental Police, who leave a bugging device in the kitchen; a letter, apparently from Charles Dickens, which directs him to an anti-matter planet called Arret; and the friendly interest of Heather Morse. Heather herself is brainwashed by someone who calls every night with instructions cued in by strains of a Brahms lullaby, and she puts Brian in touch with his own ""conductor"", the yellow-coveralled Gumball King. Brian needs periodic fixes of pure oxygen to get through the day in his polluted world, and readers will be left breathless too, trying to figure out who can be trusted and just where Brian's father's invention of a mercury-weighted golf club fits in. Oddy, only the utopian dream held out by the ending seems like science fiction; Brian's stainless steel wrapped, quick frozen reality is chillingly convincing, and this time round the hypnotically slick gimmicks that turn Bonham's plot into a minefield are part and parcel of the message.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976

Categories: FICTION