A Philosophical Investigation

Kerr, Philip. A Philosophical Investigation. London: Chatto & Windus, ©1992. New York: Farar, Straus & Giroux, 1993. Rpt. New York : Plume, 1994.

Rev. John Leonard, "Blood on the Tracts," The Nation, 7 June 1993: 788 f., our source for the annotation. Deals with "an epidemic of 'recreational murder'" in a near-future London where PET scan technology can identify "'somatogenic determinants of violent crime'" including those that predispose men—not preordain, but predispose—to serial sex murder. Participants in a program of counseling and drug therapy designed to keep the predisposed from violence are kept track of in a computer program called LOMBROSO, they are named after literary figures and, more important, philosophers. The novel deals wittily with "free will and genetic fate (or somatogenic determinism" as well as with "genotypes and computer programs" (789). (RDE, 17/07/01)