SOURCE: Tuten, Frederic. “Where Things Have Gone Kaput.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (17 October 1993): 13.

In the following review of Virtual Light, Tuten comments that the plot is overly contrived and at times incomprehensible, the characters are undeveloped and lack depth, and that the novel as a whole “lacks a fresh perspective in its imagined future.”

Sometime in the not-too-far away in a quasi-anarcho-future, in the land of holograms, light-pens and tele-presence phones, in a world where many wear respirator-masks against the muck of dense viral air, lives Rydell, former police officer turned, by force of circumstance, private cop for the “residential armed response branch” of IntenSecure, a private security organization in Los Angeles.

His is a bungled life. Once a dedicated, fearless police officer in Knoxville, Tenn., Rydell has killed a crazy who's blasted a closet filled with child hostages and who, for his reward, is suspended from...