City of God

In an all-too-recognizable city on the brink of the millennium, a young black man kills two police officers with C-4 tipped bullets in a moment of surreal violence.  The murder sets off a wave of rioting and as the city burns and the police pursue their man, conspiracy theories about, sleaze merchants and con artists of every stripe scramble to cash in -- and all of it is being broadcast on XXN, the omnipresent media entity.  In a world where the lines between television and reality blur into an electronic hall of mirrors, the apocalypse is available on pay-per-view.  Combining the decor of Blade Runner with the racial realism of Richard Price's Clockers, Tom Grimes has written a work of visionary power that is truly scary, chillingly funny -- and only slightly removed from our own world of instant docudramas and media meltdown.