Judge Dredd: Wetworks

Judge Dredd novels from Virgin Books #9

by Dave Stone

AD 2117. There's something nasty up in Puerto Lumina on the moon, and across Earth people are dying; 3,600 carefully co-ordinated deaths a day, every day and twice on Sundays. It's been going on for months. Someone's laying the groundwork for a nightmare that will encompass the entire world. And they need Joe Dredd taken out of the picture. They need a killer. They need the best.

She's the ultimate assassin: born into the horror of the Thai Territories breeding camps and trained with relentless brutality. Then they sliced into her head and streamlined her mind. She never stops until her designated target is excised. But now, for the first time, she has some ideas of her own.

Genres: Science Fiction

211 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 1995

About the author

Stone has written many spin off novels based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and Judge Dredd.

Stone also contributed a number of comic series to 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, focusing on the Dreddverse (Judge Dredd universe). In collaboration with David Bishop and artist Shaky Kane he produced the much disliked Soul Sisters, which he has described as "a joke-trip, which through various degrees of miscommunication ended up as a joke-strip without any jokes." Working independently, he created the better received Armitage, a Dreddworld take on Inspector Morse set in a future London, and also contributed to the ongoing Judge Hershey series.

Stone’s most lasting contribution to the world of Judge Dredd might well have been his vision of Brit-Cit, which until Stone’s various novels had been a remarkably underexplored area.

Reviews

[C.A. A. Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this fast-paced story, over 3,000 people must be killed every single day. It is a huge number. Even in Mega-City One. My workmate lent me this Judge Dredd novel some time ago now. I read it and enjoyed it. If you are a fan of the iconic futuristic policeman then I would recommend. I think a reader of this particular anti-hero would need to know a bit about the character first. That is not hard nowadays. He has become a household name.

[Charles Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast-paced, mean and nasty Dredd-style conspiracy thriller, tripped up by some abrupt tonal shifts near the end (and back again) about the enemy and a sense that we've come into a sequel. (The InterDep group comes in like we should know who they are already) The book also suffers a bit from having an underlying secret-orders-at-work backstory that not even Stone's other stories, never mind other Dredd writers, will bring up again, but it works fine enough for this story.

If you're a Dredd fan, this also has some fun continuity moments: since nobody knew Judge Niles and Hershey would be firm allies for years in the strip, here Niles is as a dirty-dealing antagonist and plausibly enough from 1995's POV! And Dredd's violent breaking-down from the cover star will reminds you of Aimee Nixon in Titan, 19 years later.