I don't know if Book Talk does this, but I'll ask anyway.

I few years ago I read a book I want to find again, and I also want to see if the author has anything else written. Some of the things I remember:

- future, sci-fi tale with an old-school Clive Barker feel to it
- there were many compartmented "worlds" that people lived in, including a Cat World inhabitied only by cats
- the main character was a detective type, trying to figure out some strange deaths
- there was a weird other dimension type thing that the main character was able to get to with the help of an airplane
- another criminal character had a life countdown clock on his forhead that he had disabled

That's all I got. Can anyone piece together the title from this?

Sounds a little like Jack L. Chalker's Well World series.

It does sound like the Well World series, but a few thing in SunMonkeys rundown sound off for that series. I've never read it, but could it be The Illuminatus Trilogy.

This was a long time ago, but I finally tracked down the book. It is worth a read if anyone hasn't tried it.

Only Forward
by Michael Marshall Smith

Thanks for getting back to us, SunMonkey: it is always good to know how these things end up!

I have a couple of the guy's books and hope I won't be embarrassed by finding that I own that one but failed to answer the question originally asked!