Zeros 2 Heroes - The People's Publisher

Third World is a noirish crime thriller set in a near future in which alien contact has upended everything humanity thought it understood. The old rules don't apply and the new ones are still being written and fought over. It's a setting that rewards opportunism, risk-taking and ruthlessness. Fortunes are made and lost in an instant, and power flows so quick and strong that it can crush you if you take your eye off the ball. It's a natural environment for crime and subterfuge.

As the title hints, the story is also a metaphor for our own globalized social and economic inequities. Merovi Earth reflects any number of contacts between human cultures. Think of the Spanish in the New World, the British in India, or multinational corporations in today's third world. Third World blows this model up to a worldwide scale. And this time the characters we identify with aren't the ones in charge.

Fusing that metaphor with a noirish sensibility seemed to make perfect sense. Noir's cynical stance reflected a shaken faith in institutions and morality. Noir heroes had been battered by economic upheaval and the brutality of war. Goodness, altruism and trust were sucker's bets. Yet noir's scuffed heroes struggled to carve out a personal code of honor amid all the manipulations and betrayals. This combination of cynicism with flashes of carefully guarded hope fits Lonnie Brede like a glove. And the noir era's sense of being adrift in a random and chaotic world where nothing could be trusted is reflected in Third World's story of alien cultural domination and future shock. I hope you enjoy Third World.

Lonnie Brede's a Houston cop in 2040. Texas, along with the rest of the world, has been utterly transformed by alien contact. Every day a hundred thousand human guest workers cross the border between old Texas and the Merovi extraterritorial zone. So does a flood of alien technology and socially disruptive trade goods. So does power. So does crime.

When fugitives flee into the Merovi zone, Lonnie's job is to go in, under the supervision of his reptilian partner Ras, and bring them back out. But it's alien law that applies inside the zone, not his. And when a routine murder case threatens Merovi business interests, Lonnie has to decide how far outside the law he's willing to go for the sake of justice.