The Next Time I Die

New York attorney Steven Blitz, the narrator of this intriguing SF thriller from Starr (Fugitive Red), is preparing to defend a celebrity artist accused of murdering three men when his manic-depressive wife, Laura, kicks him out, demands a divorce, and reveals she’s having an affair with a woman. En route to stay with his brother, Blitz stops at a gas station, where he sees a brute manhandling a young woman who could be a college student. He’s stabbed when he attempts to intervene. When Blitz awakens after the assault, he’s in a world where he’s recovering from a car crash, not a stabbing, and he and Laura are not only on great terms but have a six-year-old daughter. He learns from the news that though it’s still 2020, Al Gore is president and is trying to avert a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. With his sanity questioned by doctors, friends, and colleagues, Blitz struggles to find out what’s happened to him. As in the best nightmarish noir, Starr ups the ante incrementally, trapping his lead in increasingly worse situations. Fans of TV’s Life on Mars will be intrigued. (June)