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This book makes the case very well that crime fiction is more than what we used to call mysteries. THE THIRD PERSON could be a mystery because it has a missing person and the protagonist is searching for her. This is a tried-and-true mystery plot. To me, however, it seemed to be more like science fiction, in that the story takes place at some time in the recognizable future, when advertising has become more pervasive, the internet has become more interactive, and corporations rule. It is set in England, though, and I think some of the 1984ish elements, such as cameras that follow everyone everywhere in public, are not so bizarrely futuristic in Great Britain as this prospect seems in the United States. Acquiring these camera tapes of train stations and restaurants to track where the missing person has gone and what sorts of people she encountered is a major part of the plot, as are our protagonist's efforts to enhance these tapes. The most interesting futuristic bit, in my opinion, is what's done by the school system to 'help' budding young writers. All students with talent are channeled into a writing track at school, which teaches them, insistently, how to write best-sellers. That is, after all, what the commercial publishing future needs, not lots of disaffected young men starving in garrets while they write, so they think, the Great American Novel. However, not all students picked out for this stardom want the fame and fortune, and the bad guy in this book had a negative reaction to this attempt to groom him. Then again, this book could also be classified as a romance (or RO-mance, as George Orwell styles it). This book has a young man in love with and committed to a young woman. He spends too much time in chat rooms, though, and becomes entranced with a cyber lover. He trysts with the woman of mystery, and then his roommate and real love vanishes, which seems to him like punishment for his transgressions, and he is compelled to find her, understand her, and make amends. Overall, I prefer less romance and science fiction and more mystery in my reading, but the expanded boundaries of crime fiction certainly are interesting.
Reviewed by Joy Matkowski Perry, June 2004
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