The Bloodstained Man

This slight second novel in Rowley's pulp-noir Netherworld series barely advances the plot jump-started in 2009's Pleasure Model. Ex-homicide detective Rook Venner is still on the run with Plesur, a sex android who carries top-secret data that has made her the quarry of the government, the military, and possibly a shadowy private agency. A rendezvous with a vice-presidential aspirant whose name has been programmed into Plesur promises to clear up some of the mystery of why she is being pursued, but it's interrupted by a band of marauding mercenaries who kidnap the refugees and force Rook to fight a series of gratuitously brutal gladiatorial matches that take up much of the novel's first half. Abundant car chases, pyrotechnic gunfights, and sexual interludes only point up the story's thin substance, and sketchy illustrations by artist Justin Norman distract more than they enhance. (July)