Have just read very negative bookseller's review - I didn't think it was that bad. Yes it is a vehicle to spout republican politics but it is a good yarn, it zips along, and I liked the chapter structures, flitting between Denver and LA, although I found all the road references wearisome but, as a whodunnit, CSI can be more far-fetched. It would make a great film, Blade Runner meets Marple..

Few creatures on God’s earth are as ludicrous as the conservative who gets worked up about politics. It’s so undignified. Left-wing people can march and shout and occupy all they like: the proper conservative response is to yawn, sneer, and then turn with relief to the sports pages. Granted, we expect a certain level of enthusiasm among activists and commentators. But even these excitable fellows, if they were ever to write a novel, would know better than to shoe-horn embarrassing propaganda into it with all the subtlety of a whoopee cushion at a funeral. That is what we have with Dan Simmons’s ‘Flashback’. It is by some margin the most foolish, offensive, and badly-written book I have read all year. America, 2036. Change and decay in all around we see. The federal government, bloated and debt-ridden after voters chose another four years of THOSE GODAMN DEMOCRATS in 2012, has all but collapsed. Sinister Japanese ‘advisors’ control what’s left of it. Los Angeles is a battle-ground. Roving gangs of Mexicans claim California for the ‘Reconquista’ movement. Israel has been nuked; the ‘New Caliphate’ dominates Europe and Russia. 9/11 is now celebrated as a public holiday, a gesture of appeasement by THOSE GODAMN DEMOCRATS that seems only to have encouraged further Jihadi bombings. What else? Oh, nobody really minds, because the whole population is addicted to something called Flashback, which allows you to relive your favourite moments in the past. Conveniently, it also allows former detective Nick Bottom to go back to a murder investigation six years before. C’mon Simmons, that’s not a drug. It’s a literary device. And a pretty feeble one at that. Imagine if such a drug were invented. How many perfect experiences are there in anyone’s life you’d actually want to return to? I can count mine on the fingers of one hand: they mostly involve dogs, Northumbrian beaches, Jonny Wilkinson’s drop-goal in the 2003 World Cup, and the time I shot a brace of pheasants with a right-and-left. It might be fun to re-visit them, even if the pheasants turned out not to be quite as high or as fast as I remember. But the idea that you or I would spend every waking hour hooked up to Flashback is just stupid. OK, so the big dumb book has a big dumb hole in its big dumb plot. The thing I really object to is when the characters start lecturing us on How We Got Into This Mess. “The president we elected right then”, says Nick, “made it all worse - no, we all did - by passing those staggering entitlement programs that he knew, we all knew in our hearts, that we couldn’t begin to pay for”. Later on, one of the sinister Japanse ‘advisors’ sums it up in a nutcase. Sorry, nut-shell. “… unilateral disarmament, withdrawal from the world stage, a betrayal of old allies, a rapid and deliberate surrendering of America’s position as a superpower, and a total retreat from international responsibility that the United States of America had long taken seriously”. Oh, THOSE GODAMN DEMOCRATS. When will they learn? When will they ever learn? It’s like Melanie Phillips without the rollicking sense of fun. It’s like Mark Steyn without the scrupulous regard for dissenting views. It’s like Hannity without the sanity. This is a bloody awful book and I wish I had never read it. What we need is a drug that lets you delete unpleasant memories altogether. The eight hours I spent with ‘Flashback’ would be the first to go.