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The Next World
Once a researcher of genetics in Germany, Anna Spring has left her old life behind and now finds herself tucked away working the lazy night shift as a security officer at Pier 3 in San Francisco. When Anna's attractive new friend Mido, who works for AdUp — an advertising agency at Pier 3 — is threatened and eventually disappears, Anna's quick assistance pulls her deep into an unspeakable scandal, where Mido may not remain the only person missing...
229 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2005
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May 3, 2026Anna Spring has left her highly specialized job as a geneticist in Germany to come to San Francisco and start a new life. We don’t really know why at this point, but we do know that she takes the first job she is offered—security guard for a pier—and seems content with her life. That is until a man she has gotten to know is killed by a hit-and-run driver. Then one of the man’s co-workers—a woman that Anna has talked to only once but has developed a crush on—disappears. So Anna investigates.
None of the above is believable, at least to me, so it would have been difficult indeed to win me over later. In fact, this was one of those books where you plod through and seem to be no closer to the ending. Interminable is a word that comes to mind. Anna continually places herself in mortal danger for the sake of a man she saw only occasionally on her work breaks and a woman she has talked to once. Walk away, Anna, walk away.
Things become no more believable when an important clue depends on whether Anna happens to be German. The entire story, in fact, hinges on whether Anna was once a geneticist and is able to interpret important technical medical data. Is this likely? That’s for you to determine. Actually, it’s not; it’s for me to determine and I say hogwash. Things might have been different if Anna had started out as a Private Investigator and was hired to find her friend’s killer. Or if she had made her friendships more detailed, her motivations more believable.
Although Steck credits her Bella Books editor with superhuman feats of editorial skill—including taking out her “Germanisms” (Steck herself is German)—the book reads kind of robotic—totally unlike the more human Naiad characters, for instance, whose back list Bella has subsumed.
Toward the end of the book, the author’s description of the genetics involved in human cloning make interesting reading, but by this time Steck has already left the reader pawing through her bookshelf, looking for something more palatable.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors.
None of the above is believable, at least to me, so it would have been difficult indeed to win me over later. In fact, this was one of those books where you plod through and seem to be no closer to the ending. Interminable is a word that comes to mind. Anna continually places herself in mortal danger for the sake of a man she saw only occasionally on her work breaks and a woman she has talked to once. Walk away, Anna, walk away.
Things become no more believable when an important clue depends on whether Anna happens to be German. The entire story, in fact, hinges on whether Anna was once a geneticist and is able to interpret important technical medical data. Is this likely? That’s for you to determine. Actually, it’s not; it’s for me to determine and I say hogwash. Things might have been different if Anna had started out as a Private Investigator and was hired to find her friend’s killer. Or if she had made her friendships more detailed, her motivations more believable.
Although Steck credits her Bella Books editor with superhuman feats of editorial skill—including taking out her “Germanisms” (Steck herself is German)—the book reads kind of robotic—totally unlike the more human Naiad characters, for instance, whose back list Bella has subsumed.
Toward the end of the book, the author’s description of the genetics involved in human cloning make interesting reading, but by this time Steck has already left the reader pawing through her bookshelf, looking for something more palatable.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors.
Displaying 1 of 1 review