Tek Lab

In their third adventure (after Teklords ) set in the 22nd century, private detective Jack Cardigan and sidekick Sid Gomez are once again fighting the evil and omnipotent Teklords. A serial killer who calls himself the Unknown Soldier is stalking and executing people whom he perceives as war criminals. The wife of the latest victim thinks her husband was murdered by a copycat assassin at Teklord command, and she hires the detectives to find the Teklord killer. The story goes rapidly downhill as the villains, miraculously aware of the detectives' plans, calmly kill off the witnesses but only try to scare Cardigan away. Nor is the reader distracted from the flaws in the plot by the depiction of earth in 2120: a sprinkling of buzzwords does not paint a foreign culture. There are so many cameo appearances and short sidetracks that all tension is drained from the main story line. What little resolution there is comes not from the efforts of the heroes but from unmotivated mistakes on the part of the Teklords. (Dec.)