The Grid

Kit, the scheming screenwriter at the center of Reed's latest novel, inhabits a future London where a militant Commissar is in power, the Japanese have immigrated to the city in droves, and a new treatment for AIDS has a perplexing side effect. After Kit undergoes treatment at a mysterious medical center known as the Grid, he begins to unearth memories that belong to none other than Christopher Marlowe, incidentally the subject of a screenplay Kit's under contract to write. As Marlowe's memories become overwhelming, other Grid patients begin contacting Kit to share recovered memories of their own, including all the key figures surrounding Marlowe's murder. As the memories become more vivid, threatening to swallow the men's current identities, the group seeks to unearth the true circumstances of Marlowe's death. Reed's zeal for Marlovian history bogs the narrative down in names, dates and facts, further strained by the book's dystopian backdrop and future-punk posturing, with lots of name-dropping and little explanation. (Dec.)