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Mitch Helwig #2
Blue Limbo
Mitch Helwig is a renegade on the street with some heavy-duty hi-tech weaponry and a not quite sane determination to get revenge--even if he has to go beyond death to do it.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Terence M. Green
25 books9 followersGreen received a BA in English in 1967 from the University of Toronto, an MA from University College, Dublin, and a BEd in 1973 from the University of Toronto. He is the author of 8 books (7 novels and a short story collection) and is a 2-time World Fantasy Award finalist and a 5-time Prix Aurora Award finalist. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Danish, Polish and Portuguese.
Green is a lecturer of Creative Writing at The University of Western Ontario. He is married to Merle Casci and is the father of three sons.
Green is a lecturer of Creative Writing at The University of Western Ontario. He is married to Merle Casci and is the father of three sons.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 4, 2026
A near future thriller that combines physics, metaphysics and real life!
BLUE LIMBO is an exciting, blazing fast, high-tech noir-thriller set in a near future Toronto. Mitch Helwig, a heroic cop with a poorly established sense of his own mortality has just raided and destroyed a criminal gang's warehouse dealing them a crippling financial blow. Not content to deal solely with the police and Helwig, the gang is out for revenge. They've kidnapped his aging father and they're attempting to murder his best friend and his young daughter.
Helwig is portrayed as a vengeance-minded rogue cop armed with futuristic weaponry like laser guns that can cut through flesh like a hot wire through soft butter, water guns capable of delivering lethal electrical shocks and infallible portable lie-detectors called "barking dogs". But despite Helwig's brutal arsenal and his willingness to get things done outside of any legal boundaries, BLUE LIMBO is not the simplistic, derivative BLADE RUNNER or MAD MAX type of novel one might be forgiven for expecting.
In fact, BLUE LIMBO is a compelling, character driven essay that explores the meaning of friendship, love, family and parenting. The dialogue that Green puts into the mouths of Helwig, his aging father and his beautiful but wise-beyond-her-years nine year old daughter is positively beautiful, humorous, exquisitely heartwarming and quite capable of moving a reader to tears. The psychological difficulties that Helwig faces as a policeman, the pain of his divorce and the conflict with his wife are all achingly realistic.
Like his better known Canadian writing contemporary, Robert J Sawyer, Terence M Green is also a writer who isn't afraid to use his novels to explore deeper philosophical questions that are a natural outcome of the world's scientific advancements. In this case, the title BLUE LIMBO refers to a state of quasi-existence after death that the medical world has found a way to tap into and communicate with a deceased person's brain for a short period of time after what we have traditionally labelled as death. BLUE LIMBO positions itself deeply in the soft side of the sci-fi spectrum by leaving the technology unexplained, by simply asserting its existence and choosing instead to explore the issues that would arise were such technology available.
BLUE LIMBO is an exhilarating combination of physics, metaphysics and the realities of life and love. My hope would be that this positive review would help to deliver a few more readers. Goodness knows, BLUE LIMBO deserves it. Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
BLUE LIMBO is an exciting, blazing fast, high-tech noir-thriller set in a near future Toronto. Mitch Helwig, a heroic cop with a poorly established sense of his own mortality has just raided and destroyed a criminal gang's warehouse dealing them a crippling financial blow. Not content to deal solely with the police and Helwig, the gang is out for revenge. They've kidnapped his aging father and they're attempting to murder his best friend and his young daughter.
Helwig is portrayed as a vengeance-minded rogue cop armed with futuristic weaponry like laser guns that can cut through flesh like a hot wire through soft butter, water guns capable of delivering lethal electrical shocks and infallible portable lie-detectors called "barking dogs". But despite Helwig's brutal arsenal and his willingness to get things done outside of any legal boundaries, BLUE LIMBO is not the simplistic, derivative BLADE RUNNER or MAD MAX type of novel one might be forgiven for expecting.
In fact, BLUE LIMBO is a compelling, character driven essay that explores the meaning of friendship, love, family and parenting. The dialogue that Green puts into the mouths of Helwig, his aging father and his beautiful but wise-beyond-her-years nine year old daughter is positively beautiful, humorous, exquisitely heartwarming and quite capable of moving a reader to tears. The psychological difficulties that Helwig faces as a policeman, the pain of his divorce and the conflict with his wife are all achingly realistic.
Like his better known Canadian writing contemporary, Robert J Sawyer, Terence M Green is also a writer who isn't afraid to use his novels to explore deeper philosophical questions that are a natural outcome of the world's scientific advancements. In this case, the title BLUE LIMBO refers to a state of quasi-existence after death that the medical world has found a way to tap into and communicate with a deceased person's brain for a short period of time after what we have traditionally labelled as death. BLUE LIMBO positions itself deeply in the soft side of the sci-fi spectrum by leaving the technology unexplained, by simply asserting its existence and choosing instead to explore the issues that would arise were such technology available.
BLUE LIMBO is an exhilarating combination of physics, metaphysics and the realities of life and love. My hope would be that this positive review would help to deliver a few more readers. Goodness knows, BLUE LIMBO deserves it. Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
June 3, 2022
"Everything is blue," the computer's voice said. The crackle intervened. Seconds ticked by. "I see," the voice said. "I understand."
June 29, 2017
Illustrates what a difficult life police have. Takes place in Toronto Canada in the near future. The hero, Mitch Helwig, sets aside the rules to deal with the evil all powerful hidden forces of corruption. This is a good fast read showing some interesting personal weapon and tool applications of technologies with special interest yet to invented but seem totally plausable...
October 23, 2017
The characterization is strong enough to make this book worth finishing, though it's otherwise a bit thin. It fails the Bechdel test pretty spectcularly. Both Mitch and his father are genuinely memorable characters, though, and the writing is pretty good, the pacing fast enough that this is a nice light read for an airplane trip or similar.
January 12, 2025
bit slow but pretty interesting
i liked the world this was set in, and all the high-tech gadgets and stuff
the book progressively got better and the ending was sad but also optimistic
i find it kinda funny that mitch ended up with sam's daughter but hey, they seem good for each other
i liked the world this was set in, and all the high-tech gadgets and stuff
the book progressively got better and the ending was sad but also optimistic
i find it kinda funny that mitch ended up with sam's daughter but hey, they seem good for each other
February 16, 2019
One of my favourite Green books. Well written and interesting.
November 23, 2012
I was ready to put this book down unfinished several times, but the recommendation by Charles de Lint kept me going, wanting to find out what he had seen in it. I found the main character, Mitch Helwig, to be sympathetic and interesting enought, just could not see where the story was going or how anything fit together until literally page 170. That's 100 pages from the end! Anyway, all in all, an interesting near-future cop story, but I hope the author's future books begin to make sense a bit earlier.
January 10, 2015
Were this made into a movie after its initial release in the 90s, it could only have aired on the Fox network and would star David Hasselhoff.
July 10, 2011
This was an OK read. Good for the beach but don't expect anything great.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews