Market Forces   by Richard Morgan

A near future in which promotion in the workplace occurs through duels to the death with peers, enacted in souped-up cars on a motorway network deserted by a broken society in which the vast majority cannot afford to drive on said well-maintained motorway network. It is an extraordinarily shallow universe; a teenager's dream, unbelieveable and even unimaginable to the rest of us. To be fair, some of the simplicity might be attributed to the success the author has had in his research and extrapolation from current high-end international business practises, but it still leaves a very thin canvas on which to impress a story. It is padded a little bit by intriguing international terrorist association which the author seems to have got a fair familiarity with.

And the story is that a man joins the number one firm, makes friends, makes enemies, goes to bed with his best friend's mistress, makes good deals, makes bad deals, gets cut down by his bosses, lets his anger get the better of him by killing some people and eventually one of the bosses themselves, whereupon he is forced by the firm into a duel with his best friend angry at being informed of his friend's trespass against him. So, the story sits quite comfortably on a thin canvas. At least the story keeps moving, and always stays interesting.

However, this isn't entirely a YA flick-through. The strength is in the development of the characters in general, but in particular the main protagonist; the man at the centre of it all. We get to share a roller-coaster ride of emotions with him, get to understand his poor past and fragile present-day standing; see people around him help, support, nurture, collude, knife, desert and betray him. We learn that he is far from a perfect soul, but that he does have sentiments above his peers. In fact, by the end of the book, you really feel like you have made the acquaintance of a new friend, someone you might grudgingly stand by and defend out of loyalty.

The ending is not as spectacular as it might have been, but fits the book well and rounds the story off very cleanly. Our hero walks away badly broken but alive and proud, and newly promoted, of course.