Head On: A Novel of the Near Future (The Lock In Series Book 2)
<p><b>"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Canell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty—most of them in someone else's body." —<i>USA Today</i></b></p><p>John Scalzi returns with <i>Head On, </i>the standalone follow-up to the <i>New York Times </i>bestselling and critically acclaimed <i>Lock In</i>. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, <i>Head On </i>brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.</p><p>Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,†robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.</p><p>Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.</p><p>Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth—and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.</p><p>At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.</p>