Michael McQuay: When Trouble Beckons

By Michael McQuay
First Published: 1981
The 21st century’s toughest private eye in a future that’s running down like a dime-store watch. Where the line between rich and poor is a DMZ and they clean the streets with meat wagons. If your not tough in a world like that, you’re dead.

Swain is always first in line. this time it starts with a desperate Moon-to-Earth call from an old flame and a zombie assassin who tries to give Swain a haircut to his knees. To save the woman he loves from mind-wasting madness, Swain takes off for Freefall, a company town with a capital “C”. A space colony of pale faced drones who live–and die–by the time clock. When he keeps getting questions instead of answers, Swain, aided by a streetwise lady space cabby, decide to blow the joint apart.