#12AngryRobotsOfChristmas ‘The Sensation’ by Amanda Bridgeman

About the book…

A series of brutal murders has the homicide division of San Francisco’s Hub 9 working overtime. But as the bodies mount, they begin to question whether the attacks are random or somehow connected.

When one of their own falls victim, Detective Salvi Brentt and her homicide team join forces with the narcotics and cyber divisions to track down those responsible. They soon discover that a volatile new drug-tech experience, involving black market neural implants, has hit the streets, causing the epidemic of violence and missing persons.

With the clock ticking and the bodies piling up, Salvi must go deep undercover in the seedy Sensation club scene to find out who is behind it. But in the secretive playgrounds of the rich and powerful, some will stop at nothing to protect their empire…

Many thanks to the awesome team at Angry Robot Books for sending me this review copy of ‘The Sensation’ by Amanda Bridgeman which was published by Angry Robot in e-book, audiobook and paperback formats!

This is a brilliant and engaging, near future murder mystery, set in the Sensation, the party district of future San Francisco. The first case back for returning detective, Salvi Brentt, following her debut in ‘The Subjugate’ turns out to be both wicked, and personal. She is confronted with a violent death, during which his model girlfriend slept through the entire attack. Recognising signs of drug usage, the team at SFPD soon link the recent spate of deaths in the city to 2 new street drugs, Flyte-an accelerated form of ecstasy-and Fyte-an accelerated form of meth. Both cause euphoric states which induce the taker to make questionable choices , and not under a full informed state of consent.

When one of their own falls foul of this escalating crime wave, the team quickly swing into action and send Salvi undercover at one of the clubs, where a race against time to work out just who is synthesising the drugs which are flooding the city…and just how high up the chain of command that this goes. There are some very high level players who are heavily invested in the drug trade, and could these multiple, violent and bizarre deaths be an attempt to hide the real agenda of what they are up to? And when the chief’s daughter has gone missing, last seen in Sensation club, Floor to Ceiling, the homicide and narcotics team need to bury professional hatchets, not in each other, and get on with the job.

A gripping police procedural which has you feeling like you are amongst friends, this combination of detective fiction and future tech, is both different and unusual. It is a breath of fresh air for someone like me, who does not always ‘get’ sci-fi and I found this was so seamlessly woven into the tale, that it became very easy to pick up the futuristic vocabulary. The darker, shadier side of club life is brought up off the page and into your mind with ease, and is entirely relatable as, no matter what time frame a novel is set in, rights and wrongs, victim and murder, are always going to  be motifs which are understood at a fundamental level.

Thoroughly enjoyable, and highly recommended, hopefully there will be more entries in the Salvation series!

About the author…

Amanda is a Tin Duck Award winner, an Aurealis and Ditmar Awards finalist and author of several science fiction novels. Her works include the best-selling military SF/space opera Aurora series (previously published by Momentum Books/Pan Macmillan Australia), alien contact drama ‘The Time Of The Stripes’, and sci-fi mystery Salvation series, consisting of The Subjugate and The Sensation (published by Angry Robot Books, UK).

‘The Subjugate’ has been optioned for TV by Aquarius Films (Lion, Berlin Syndrome, Dirt Music) and Anonymous Content (True Detective, Mr Robot, The Alienist, Counterpart).

The Subjugate is also currently being studied at two German universities (Düsseldorf and Cologne) as part of a program on Australian speculative fiction, in conjunction with the Centre for Australian Studies.

Born in the seaside/country town of Geraldton, Western Australia, she moved to Perth (Western Australia) to study film & television/creative writing at Murdoch University, earning her a BA in Communication Studies. Perth has been her home ever since, aside from a nineteen-month stint in London (England) where she dabbled in Film & TV ‘Extra’ work.

Amanda is a versatile writer who enjoys working across different genres and creative formats, be it novels, screenplays, short stories, etc, and creating both original and tie-in work.

She was a finalist in the Universal AU/Screenwest Pitch competition (2019) and a finalist in the AACTA Regional Landscapes in Partnership with Screenworks Pitch (2020) for her feature film THE ARTISAN (comedy/drama).

Her short story The Great Preservation can be found on Short Édition’s Short Story Dispenser.

Her new novel Pandemic:Patient Zero will be the first novel set in the award-winning Pandemic tabletop board game universe, and will be released worldwide in 2021 through Aconyte Books (UK).

She has a short story in the Warhammer 40K universe scheduled for release in 2022 through Black Library (UK).

Links-http://amandabridgeman.com.au/