Atom(2000)

Steve Aylett

Welcome to the comic and bizarre world of Mr. Taffy Atom, private detective extraordinaire, and his voracious sidekick, Jed Helms, who just happens to be a fish. Set in the same nightmarishly noir underworld of Beerlight seen in other works by Steve Aylett, Atom follows the hero as he trails a motley pack of criminals chasing down some missing gray matter - not their own, but the pilfered brain of Time magazine's Man of the Century, the Big E. Atom is a laconic, world-weary private eye in the Bogart tradition in a world where the cops are the villains and the criminals, if not heroes, are no worse than the forces trying to maintain what passes for law and order in Beerlight. "Aylett has a cold, accurate eye, a mocking wit, and a black, playful angle of attack which has learned something from cyberpunk but has the smack of idiosyncrasy." -- Michael Moorcock