Two sci-fi mind mangling crime thrillers from author Tom Sweterlitsch. Between time-stamped altered/virtual-reality archive sleuthing and post-apocalypse time-travel paradox tweaking, both books make for a brain bending experience. This is my pick for an author destined to become an established luminary of the genre. Before the published success of his first two books, Tom Sweterlitsch worked at the Carnegie Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped for twelve years.
Pittsburgh is ashes, but its past can be explored in virtual reality called the Archive. Losing himself in the Archive in grief for his wife and daughter, John Blaxton discovers a body in Nine Mile Run that someone tried to delete from the program, and must find out why. You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.
Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In Western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family–and to locate his teenage daughter, who has disappeared. Though she can’t share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra–a ship assumed lost to the darkest currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL’s experience with the future has triggered this violence. (Goodreads Description)