The Repossession Mambo

This high concept thriller is set in a near future when people rarely die of old age. This is all thanks to thanks to the perfection of artificial organs, or 'artiforgs'. There is nothing that can't be enhanced. Your eyes, liver, kidneys, bladder, tastebuds, and even brain stem can all be replaced or upgraded. They can even build in a radar detector. But it doesn't come cheap. This kind of technology isn't insured by your usual health cover, a union and many other loan companies have been set up to afford people financing on their new organs. The cost is high and the interest is higher, and not everyone can afford to make their repayments.

Enter the repossession men, or Bio-Repo for short. This is a group of men whose job it is to track down people whose artiforg payments have lapsed significantly. When they find the client, and they will find you, they 'repossess' the organ. So if you have an internal organ such as a heart, liver or stomach, that’s it for you.

Now one of the best Bio-Repo men is on the run from the Union he used to collect for. He’s holed up in the burnt out remains of a hotel, frantically bashing out his story on an old typewriter. He knows it only a matter of time before they find him, but he also knows exactly how they work, after all, he used to be one of them.

This book read like a film for me. The language was visual and the story moved along at an exciting pace. Having said that, I found the book lacklustre in parts. I didn't really care enough for the main character. However, I think he is purposely constructed with an inbuilt moral ambiguity that is intended to throw people off balance. Garcia wrote the screenplay for The Repossession Mambo before the book had even been published and I think the film may succeed in some of these areas in ways the book didn't.

This is a tense, exciting thriller that poses larger questions about what it is to be human, even when most of your body parts are artificial. Eric Garcia is also the author of Matchstick Men, which was turned into a film starring Nicholas Cage & Sam Rockwell.