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Dead Air is the Iain Banks literary novel (note the dropped M) that opens with one of the most arresting scenes in his bibliography: a London apartment party on the morning of September 11, 2001, with the host's flat overlooking the Thames and the news from New York coming in on the kitchen TV. The narrator is Ken Nott, a left-wing London shock-jock radio presenter whose professional persona has been increasingly hard to maintain as a private person.
Banks uses Ken's job to do what he often did in his straight-fiction novels, which is examine the small daily compromises that make a political position survivable in commercial life. The book is funnier than the cover suggests. The romance subplot is unusually tender for late-period Banks. The thriller machinery in the back half is competent rather than essential.
Four stars. One of the underrated late Iain Banks. Recommended to readers who have only read his SF and want to see what his non-genre work looked like at its best.
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