From Publishers Weekly
Steele (Labyrinth of Night) makes his hardcover debut with this brisk thriller set in an earthquake-devastated St. Louis in the year 2013. Eleven months after the quake, the city remains under martial law, policed by the troops of the federal Emergency Relief Agency. When hard-up reporter (and narrator) Gerry Rosen-whose son was killed and marriage ruined by the quake-gets a mysterious message meant for his best friend, fellow reporter John Tiernan, Rosen thinks he's stumbled onto a big story about corporate underhandedness. It soon becomes clear, however, that the story is far more important and dangerous than that. Tiernan is murdered, Rosen's apartment is ransacked by ERA troops and the reporter finds himself on the run, racing against time and ERA soldiers to fathom a conspiracy that threatens the entire country. Steele keeps the action moving at a breathless pace right up to the nail-biting climax. There's little that's new in his near-future setting, though-or in his plot, which treats its basic ingredients, artificial intelligence and corporate conspiracy, in a formulaic way, making this an entertaining page-turner but nothing more. (Nov.) NonfictionCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Gerry Rosen, reporter for the Big Muddy Inquirer, uncovers a story too dangerous to print when he becomes involved in an undercover attempt to preserve the last vestiges of freedom in the United States, which is currently wracked by environmental disasters and threatened by increasing control from government relief agencies. Set in 21st-century St. Louis, this taut sf novel by Steele (Labyrinth of Night, Berkley, 1992) pits ordinary people against the bureaucratic machine. Most libraries will want this for their sf collections.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In the year 2012, Oregon and Washington have voted to secede from the union, a powerful space-based antimissile satellite is about to be launched, and St. Louis is hit by a devastating major earthquake. In St. Louis' Forest Park, the city's uprooted homeless become helpless victims of the Emergency Relief Agency's insidious transformation from public service providing postearthquake assistance to military battalion intent on quashing civilian unrest. On the scene to write a column for The Big Muddy Inquirer, down-on-his-luck reporter Gerald Rosen stumbles onto the biggest lead of his career when his palm-top computer intercepts a message intended for his colleague, John Tiernan. When Tiernan is killed by a high-tech laser gun, Rosen uncovers an ERA plot to gain control of the antimissile satellite and to establish martial law throughout the nation. With tightly paced suspense, witty first-person narration, and even a little high-tech glitz in the form of an intelligent computer virus named Ruby, Steele delivers a light but satisfying read. Carl Hays

From Kirkus Reviews
Steele picks the unlikely setting of an earthquake-devastated St. Louis, circa 2012, for his hardcover debut. As the city's residents struggle to rebuild their lives, operatives from the Emergency Relief Agency (ERA) conduct nocturnal raids against the homeless and swagger like Nazis. Gerry Rosen, the sophomoric narrator and a journalist for the Big Muddy Inquirer, has his suspicions of these ersatz storm troopers validated when a friend and coworker is murdered. The Tiptree Corporation, a local hi-tech outfit, seems implicated. While Rosen wallows in gratuitous self- pity and guilt over the death of his son and his impending divorce, his investigation reveals an unlikely conspiracy between Tiptree and the ERA to overthrow the federal government using a new laser satellite. Rescue comes in the amoeba-like form of Ruby Fulcrum, a Tiptree-designed computer virus/artificial intelligence that escapes into the national computer network and speaks to Rosen with his son's voice via pocket PC. Once the pair join forces, Fulcrum literally turns the laser against the ERA, democracy is protected, and Rosen has the biggest scoop of his career. But Rosen seems emotionally untouched by the experience: He does not come to terms with the loss of his son or wife. Not much to satisfy the reader here, just a puppy-dog characterization of artificial intelligence, detective novel repartee, and hopscotch leaps of plot. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
"I couldn't put it down" (John Varley)

Through an earthquake-ravaged Midwest, an investigative reporter chases down the story of a lifetime.

"Breathtaking...Steele's science [is] harder than Heinlein's...his breakneck pacing and gift for characterization are reminiscent of the late master's best work." (Washington Post