John Zakour is a humor/sf/fantasy writer with a Master's degree in Human Behavior. He has written thousands of gags for syndicated comics, comedians, and TV shows (including Rugrats and The Tonight Show). John currently writes his own syndicated comics, Working Daze and Maria's Day, for Universal Press. He also has been a contributor to Nickelodeon magazine, writing Fairly Odd Parents, Rugrats, and Jimmy Neutron comic books. John also writes Simpsons comics for Bongo Comics and wrote the video game Darwin's Paradox. John has written seven humorous SF novels for DAW Books, three YA books, four humorous self-help books and three books on HTML.

Lawrence Ganem is the co-writer, with John Zakour, of three published novels and one novella, all featuring futuristic private detective Zachary Nixon Johnson. Lawrence is an executive at DC Comics and currently resides in southern California.

The Plutonium Blonde by John Zakour & Lawrence Ganem

Zachary Nixon Johnson is the last private eye on earth (long story, starts here). And in the pop culture-crazed, deco-inspired world of 2057, that makes him a bit of a celebrity. It also makes him a magnet for trouble. In his years as a PI, Zach has seen a lot of strange things and solved a lot of crazy cases. But when the famous BB Starr, a former exotic dancer who is now the CEO of the world's largest corporation, hires him to find her illegal, plutonium-powered, psychotic android clone, Zach knows that the weirdness of his life is about to get a whole lot weirder.

Once Zach takes the case, his life is suddenly filled with unwanted publicity, uncommon dangers, and unexplained assassination attempts. He realizes that not only is this case more trouble than it's worth, but the mystery of the missing android is deeper than he thought.

Together with his beautiful, kick-boxing surgeon girlfriend Electra, his genius inventor tech expert Randy, and his holographic, sentient super-computer sidekick HARV, Zach must find a way to unravel the mystery, find the missing android, and quite possibly save all humanity from total destruction.

What some guys will do for five thousand credits per day, plus expenses.

CURATOR'S NOTE

A sci-fi parody of noir detective stories, do not miss this story of the last private detective on planet Earth! – Alex Shvartsman

 

REVIEWS

  • "An excellent first novel in the style of the great Douglas Adams ... This novel can be universally recommended to anyone with a funny bone."

    – Cinescape

  • "Surprisingly clever ... spoofs the genre and everything else in sight."

    – Science Fiction Chronicle (Best of '01)

  • "A fast-paced science fiction noir thriller that has entertaining plot twists."

    – Romantic Times

  • "Fast-paced, witty and shrewd ... futuristic pulp for the thinking reader ... No one who got two paragraphs into this dark, droll, downright irresistible novel could ever bear to put it down until the last heart pounding moment."

    – SF Site
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

My name is Zachary Nixon Johnson. I am the last private detective on earth. I’ll get to the whys and wherefores of that a little later and, as you'll see, it's not exactly one hundred percent true, but it sounds good and hopefully I've at least got your attention now.

The year is 2057 and, after a handful of species-altering upheavals, earth-shattering, cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. I won't bore you with the judicial, economic and anthropological minutiae of the New New World Order, but suffice to say that the sun still rises in the east, the human race is still around to notice it, and we still pull down the window shades, roll over in bed and sleep until noon whenever possible.

Of course, the world's not perfect. People still run the shades-of-gray gamut of good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while, some crazy thing happens that threatens society, all of humanity, or the entire space-time continuum.

And for some reason, it always happens on my watch.

I guess that's as good a place as any to start this story.