The Last Crime

by Ian Kennedy Martin

In a nightmare world of people controlled by an elite and their computers a desperate Harold Acteon seeking for justice has a violent but inevitable philosophy that freedom requires the freedom to murder. And from the outset the chase between the pursuer and his pursued can only resolve itself through slaughter and mayhem in this appalling rationale of destruction. "What makes this novel so interesting is the extraordinary brilliance of its execution. Kennedy-Martin writes like someone as rapturously high on words and images as his characters on their 'jollies'. For most of the time one is stunned by his virtuosity. One has the impression of an immensely fecund, feverish intelligence to match the immensely fecund, feverish imagination..." Francis King, Spectator "The satisfying qualities of a well-planned thriller as well as the intellectual questing that is the essence of science fiction..." Isobel Murray, Financial Times

147 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Ian Kennedy Martin is a British television scriptwriter. He is best known for his creation of the popular 1970s police drama series The Sweeney, produced by Euston Films for Thames Television, which ran on the ITV network from 1975 to 1978. It also spawned two feature film spin-offs. He is also known for writing the 1975 action film Mitchell.

He began his television career in the 1960s, first as a script editor on the military police drama series Redcap (1964) and then later as a writer on series such as The Troubleshooters (1965). In 1971 he worked on the popular BBC drama series The Onedin Line, which ran for nine years until 1980.

Since the end of The Sweeney in 1978, Kennedy Martin has continued to write for various police / detective dramas. These have included the BBC's Juliet Bravo and The Chinese Detective during the 1980s and ITV's The Knock in the 1990s. He has also written a number of novels, including Rekill and the dystopian science fiction novel The Last Crime, this last under the pseudonym John Domatilla. On 9th March 2009, his first play, The Berlin Hanover Express premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in North London.

He is the younger brother of the scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, with whom he worked on Redcap and The Sweeney.

Reviews

[David Leemon · Rating 2 out of 5]

The guy whines about, and the way the women are described, I kept seeing breasts and asses walking around without anything supporting them. I suppose there are some ideas in this book that I might be able to use in an RPG some day, but I can't recommend this book for anybody except someone who likes poorly-written science fiction.

[Gareth Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rambling and full of complex language purely for the sake of it. The plot seems to wander around and ends up going nowhere.

I also don't know who Ian Kennedy Martin is that's claiming to be the author on the ebook on Amazon - have they pirated it? Is it the original author using a different alias? Who knows.