Double Jeopardy was a real find!
This takes the theme of a near-future mind altering drug, but does a fantastic job with it! It's actually two stories combined written by Fletcher Pratt, an American writer of more than sixty books, many on civil war and naval history, who co-wrote several fantasy books with L. Sprague de Camp. This had the feeling of the great science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and Ray Bradbury (especially Fahrenheit 451).
Federal Agent George Helmfeet Jones is assigned to locate the illegal reproduction of Perizone, a closely controlled drug that has cured every type of blood disease, but has the effect of rendering the person a susceptible blank slate for a time. His trail leads him to the reclusive Braunholzer Institute in upstate New York where they are secretly studying the replication of living matter. Two of the leaders are his his old college friend, and Betty-Marie Taliaferro, who is both gorgeous and very highly intelligent. One of the other scientists he investigates accidentally leads him to an old farmhouse where he is greeted warmly by a naive young woman who looks very much like Betty-Marie. Hmmm.
All of this information is fed into the Integrator, which compiles random data into a cohesive solution, but only to a point - human ingenuity still plays a large part. Can you tell what's going on from those clues?
The Perizone mystery is more or less sorted by the halfway mark, when events lead Jones into his next case - a quantity of 'raw humanoid material' meant for the Braunholzer Reproducer has disappeared, and, the theft of three million dollars from an automatically controlled, sealed rocket flying at 8g from New York to San Francisco! I love a 'locked-room' mystery. If someone stole the Reproducer material to create a living being, it still couldn't stand the G force of the rocket. It was secure and sealed in NY and opened empty in SF - how was it done? Jones begins investigating the bankers, the security system and the other packages aboard - concluding with - I must say - a strange and twisted solution you will never be able to figure out, and still might not believe when you hear it!
Still, it's a fun and mysterious trip getting there.
It has the mood of the great Truffaut film of Fahrenheit 451. A slightly futuristic feel, but still of this world and time. Like most people, Jones flies around in a personal "heli", carries a needle gun for protection and uses visi-panels for video chats. The basic story is old school noir detective, but perfectly jazzed up for sci-fi. I loved the mood of it, just the right tone.
I found a first edition 1952 Doubleday Science Fiction hardcover copy by chance.
If you are lucky to come across this title, I recommend it!
1952 / Hardcover / 214 pages
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