The Hunt For Pierre JNR-David M. Henley

The Hunt For Pierre JNR

David M. Henley

Harper Voyager, Jul 1 2014, $16.99

ISBN: 9780732295608

By the middle of the twenty-second century, a small segment of the twenty billion humans residing inside the domes evolved with extrasensory mental powers.  Derogatorily dubbed psionics by those who feared their superiority will allow dominance if unchecked; the World Union established the Services with a mission to control these dangerous mutants.  The Services aggressively capture, isolate and incarcerate psionics on remote islands in order to inhibit the impact of psi skills and prevent a revolt.

In 2151 an experiment mated registered Psionics Pierre Sandro and Mary Kastonovich; which leads to giving birth to Pierre Jnr.  Three months later, Pierre Jnr escapes and vanishes.  In spite of a massive manhunt by the Services, he is not found and assumed dead as he is a baby even with special kinetic skills never remotely recorded before. 

However, the worst nightmare of those in power surfaces in 2159 when a sighting of eight year old Pierre Jnr is confirmed by the Weave; as the legend of a psi with the uncanny ability to control others’ minds lives.  The Services assigns the best psi hunters of the Primacy military wing abetted by telepath Peter Lazarus who surrendered after three decades of freedom beneath the radar to prevent the most powerful psi ever, who he believed caused his sister to suicide, from killing the world.

The Hunt for Pierre Jnr is a superb science fiction thriller that extrapolates present day issues like the environment and related moral and amoral responses into the next century.  Rapidly changing points of view makes it initially difficult to follow who’s who, but also brings a fabulous frantic desperate pace to this character-driven yet action-packed futuristic thriller.

Harriet Klausner