I first read this book on the Irish ferry taking me to Wales for a slightly traumatising summer working as a waiter in a Butlin's holiday camp in the early 90s. It wasn't all bad - it was the summer of an absolutely debilitating London-melting heatwave, and you could hike u to a fairly nice dune-lined beach and watch a pod of dolphins splash around in the distance. Also the fudge was exceptional Still, it wasn't until I read Anno Dracula that I suddenly became a Newman fan, and in all the fuss and bother and angst this kind of passed me by. 

I read a Tom Clancy that summer, too. Clear And Present Danger maybe? Clancy could write fairly riveting international techno-thrillers, but it probably helped that I was extremely callow and ignorant of international politics but it was good and chunky and not very challengingI reread some Douglas Adams, too, and that was when the phrase 'Eddie's in the time stream' started echoing in my brain as I wandered through the mazes of bright yellow chalets wondering what to do about getting showers in the swimming pool now thay my towel had been stolen. I also finally, finally got my hands on the collected V For Vendetta, the culmination of years of obsession after finding a few issues of Warrior inexplicably in some department store in Limerick, and I read most of it in the dunes in bright sunshine while dolphins frolicked in the bay. Anyway.

Of course this anticipates the world of Anno Dracula with its setting of a world where every film noir ever made co-exists side by sde in a city where it's always 2.30am and it's always raining. It's a virtual world - this is cyberpunk! - created by a master villain using it as an escape from prison and a means of subverting and taking over the benign AI that runs the world, Yggdrasil. Two Dreamers - artists adept at creating stories and settings in such environments - are sent in after him, the second after the first gets completely absorbed by his noir Humphrey Bogart-esque persona. Whatever else about the book, I never forgot the discussion about which female persona the second Dreamer should adopt, all the standard female characters being too useless or meeting grisly ends that would be forced on her by the conventions and rules of noir that prevailed in the City. Newman as never been unaware of the limitations of the fictions he clearly loves. I'd forgotten the truly ghastly bit where a black character turns up, just in case you thought women had it bad in the genre.

The battle for supremacy in the City commences, through plots and settings and involving characters from decades of black and white crime films all jostling around in the background when they're not getting in everyobody's way, and occasional intrusions from other genres as characters try to change the rules and assert control. There's even a terrific inevitable car chase before the climax and a twist reveal. It's really great and I enjoyed revising it, traumatic associations and all. The audio book I listened to includes four extra short stories, two of them from the same setting, though they'll probably be familiar to regular Newman readers.