Saskia Brandt is a detective in 2023 with the European FIB (an EU type of FBI). When her holiday is interrupted for an important case she returns to her office to discover her secretary's body in her office refrigerator. This is the case she is recalled for.

Her supervisor calls and lets her know that a maintenance engineer is due less than twenty hours from the time of her return and she must have found out who is trying to frame her before then.

Professor David Proctor is a scientist. Twenty years before he worked at the West Lothian Project research facility when a bomb destroyed it, he was suspected of committing the crime, even though it caused the death of his wife, but has no recollection of it.

He is contacted by a General McWhirter who informs him that his former research partner Bruce Shimoda has restarted the artificial reality program they were working on and plugged himself in, and so Proctor agrees to return to the site to see if he can help his old friend get free.

After temporarily plugging into the world himself, Proctor initiates a new explosion at the facility and carries out his old friend's final request - for Proctor to kill him. He receives assistance from an unknown outside source and escapes from police custody at his friend's funeral.

Saskia Brandt now has to hunt Proctor whilst she herself is pursued due to the death of her secretary.

All the while, and very slowly introduced is the work that Proctor's daughter Jennifer is doing, and the discoveries she is making although these are only hinted at early on, and seem almost an irrelevance at first - don't worry all will become clear with this subplot in time.

This is a rather odd little novel in a couple of ways. I had a rather distressing feeling when reading this book, as quite early in the book I could see a twist coming with the matter of the death of Brandt's secretary. I was very worried that the author was about to attempt to keep a most obvious plot twist secret until the great reveal at the end of the tale.

I was wrong, for this twist was revealed in the very next chapter, and that subplot then continues with Brandt attempting to discover more of her own missing memories. I was quite taken aback with this, and most pleasantly surprised.

So what we have is a detective with memory issues, chasing a scientist also with memory issues. Interesting stuff.

This is a complex multi-threaded novel, you will need to keep your wits about you when reading it. For a start it's not the easiest book to classify. There are elements of the crime novel here. We have a detective chasing a suspect. It's near future setting and associated advances in technology mark it in some ways as hard sf in the tradition of such fine exponents as Baxter and Clarke. There are elements of cyberpunk with the artificial world created by Proctor and Shimoda, and there is a definite element of conspiracy with the hidden organisation helping Proctor escape and evade the law.

The action is fast and moves rapidly between perspectives, changing back and forth between Proctor, Brandt and increasingly Proctors daughter. This can at times seem almost a little too frequent and some of the cuts seem to jerk the reader to and fro.

But this is a minor criticism, for this style adds some real pace to the tale and you will easily find yourself a further fifty or sixty pages through the book without really noticing.

But in the midst of all this the author does not forget that characters in a book have to be recognisable as human beings. He manages this. Proctor's strained relationship with his daughter is understandable. Brandt's confusion with her own identity feels real. Okay some of the peripheral characters are described on as far as needed to let them exist and play their part in the narrative, but in many ways more detail to such side characters would just get in the way.

There is much in this novel to recommend both it and the author.

Synopsis
It is 2023. Scientist David Proctor is running for his life. On his trail is Saskia Brandt, a detective with the European FIB. She has questions. Questions about a bomb that exploded back in 2002. But someone is hunting her too. The clues are in the shattered memories of her previous life.

She has only hours to decipher them. As Proctor attempts to leave England, heading towards a future he cannot imagine, Brandt knows only this: Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Déjà Vu takes the reader on a startling journey through a possible future, through digital minds, and through the consequences of the choices we make.

It is the debut novel by Ian Hocking.

"Imaginative, intertwined themes come together as the plot of 'Déjà Vu' races on apace. The science is coherent and credible - the action is unstoppable. Complex but clear, it's involving all the way."-- John Griffiths, author.

"An excellent fast-paced thriller with a science fiction edge. The novel explores future scientific technology, highlighting both the amazing possibilities which this can afford, as well as the potential peril." -- Jonathan Martin