Nick Harkaway: Titanium Noir (2023, Knopf Incorporated, Alfred A.)
English language
Published May 10, 2023 by Knopf Incorporated, Alfred A..
An engaging noir tale set in a world where a Titan treatment makes a person larger and practically immortal. Cal operates as a detective working with police to solve cases involving Titans.
I really liked this noir mystery that wasn’t just gritty for the look of it. The influence of T7 and Titans on society was great food for thought, and I spent a bit of time wondering what being “human” would mean in such a world.
The entire story’s told in first person, present tense by Sounder. He’s an interesting character to follow around and competent without being smug or suspiciously lucky. I did initially wonder if he was hiding something special about himself to be doing the kind of job he was, but there were no gotcha moments of that sort.
I enjoyed the other characters a lot. They all felt like they were living their own lives with their own murky motivations rather than their actions revolving around Sounder and his case.
Plenty to get your teeth into in this SF noir
None of Harkaway's books are quite like one another, and they're all worth your time.
Like the pulp that inspires it, Titanium Noir is a short piece that rolls along a brisk pace. The protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a bridge between two worlds. He lives and works as a detective, doing private work and consulting for the police of Chersenesos, but has ties to the level of society occupied by those so obscenely wealthy their very being is a mixture of unsettling and glamorous both for the other characters and for us readers. When crimes involve one of these hyper-rich, Sounder is brought in to smooth things over. The book starts with Sounder arriving on scene for a crime much too complex and messy for the easier fixes he's used to.
Sounder navigates a crime, a world, and a story in which power is manifested very directly as something brutal …
None of Harkaway's books are quite like one another, and they're all worth your time.
Like the pulp that inspires it, Titanium Noir is a short piece that rolls along a brisk pace. The protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a bridge between two worlds. He lives and works as a detective, doing private work and consulting for the police of Chersenesos, but has ties to the level of society occupied by those so obscenely wealthy their very being is a mixture of unsettling and glamorous both for the other characters and for us readers. When crimes involve one of these hyper-rich, Sounder is brought in to smooth things over. The book starts with Sounder arriving on scene for a crime much too complex and messy for the easier fixes he's used to.
Sounder navigates a crime, a world, and a story in which power is manifested very directly as something brutal and inhuman, something which transforms the people who have it. As the detective slowly, painstakingly pieces things together we meet his mettle and resolve in a world where no one is innocent, everyone is beholden, and everyone is more wise to the seediness of the world than you are.
It's a vaguely alter-world, somewhere between the concrete of classic city noir, a very human present, and a vague, possible future. The quasi-mythical Chersenesos is more medically advanced than us, but at the same time no one ever mentions carrying or using a mobile phone.
As metaphors for brutality of wealth and power it is not subtle, but this is not a genre of subtlety, and like many brutal things it is quite effective. And in the end, I think, also satisfying.
