Tek Net

Having spawned a comic-book series, a set of trading cards, four TV movies and a cable TV series, Shatner's Tek series, starring tough-guy future detectives Jake Cardigan and Sid Gomez, now gives birth to a ninth novel that's more of the same old. It's the year 2122. Powerful Teklords have been raking in staggering profits from Tek, the cybernetic chips that deliver addictive fantasies. Now, however, rumors abound of a simple non-chip alternative to Tek, threatening the Teklords' empire. Jill, Gomez's nymphomaniacal second wife (of four), investigates the rumors, learns too much and finds herself caught between Johnny Trocadero, kingpin of the San Diego cartel, and the European Teklords Trocadero would like to depose. When Jill is kidnapped, Gomez and Cardigan speed off to her rescue, ramming through a dizzying succession of one-dimensional bad guys, roboticized hit men and cliched imprisonments, including a climactic sewer-crawl, before they manage to once again save the woman and the world. To beam today's big-time crime up into his seedy near-future, Shatner relies on superficially sketched gadgetry and choppy dialogue peppered with awkward 20th-century Spanglish; but none of these ploys compensates for minimal plot and paper-thin characterizations. This caper has the flavor of hardboiled ham. (Oct.)