Gun, With Occasional Music

An easy reading romp of a novel that swaps between being a tribute to Raymond Chandler's noir detectives and mildly dystopian science fiction. It was a single sitting rainy Saturday read for me that was undemanding as long as I kept track of the weird stuff.

Metcalf is a gritty and cynical private 'inquisitor', the change in his job title represents the dystopic culture of the time. He's employed by a client, the client turns up dead and another man asks him to investigate it as he's in the firing line to be charged with the murder. The 'Inquisitor Office' gets in the way of his investigation and the novel proceeds as a game of cat and mouse as the facts of the case slowly get revealed. Along the way his 'karma' card keeps being docked by the Office to scare him off. Zero karma points could see him taken out of the society.

There are the normal noir detective tropes of cynical banter, women to be ogled, people being followed into dark places, bars with cigarette butts in pools of beer on the floor, all the expected stuff. There are also 'evolved' animals, modified animals that mimic humans, walking upright, wearing clothes, talking, carrying guns. And everybody is snorting drugs variously named as Forgettol, Avoidol, Acceptol, to smooth out their experience of living.

The book won the Locus Award for best first novel in 1995 so it came with a pedigree. However, the thirty years since has pushed the misogyny into the 'no go' zone. And even for a 1995 novel to hark back fifty years was pushing it. The weirdness of the characters held my attention and I was less interested in the 'who dunit' aspect as I was in the play between the human and animal power tripping. OK, as an Australian I wanted to know more about that kangaroo on the cover.

As things came to a head between Metcalf and the Office the story took an unexpected u-turn and the whole endeavour seemed lost. The final chapters take us into a new world and Metcalf has to adapt with instant reflexes to bring the investigation to a close. This final part of the story elevated it up a notch and gave a sense of satisfaction to my day of reading.

PS. The novel took inspiration from a quote by a Chandler character, "... the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket."

Far from my usual genres, this was a fantastical detective novel that got my attention right away... and then lost it. Still whimsical and fun, which is weird (in a good way) for a hardboiled detective story

Huh. It's weird, definitely weird. Sam Spade meets Animal Farm meets Brave New World. Complex mystery, plenty of characters, some of whom could use more backstory, but plenty of world-development. This might actually need some digesting...

A lot of this book felt like a cheesy noir detective story, from the bantering that always leaves our hero with the last word to the predictable sexual conquest. On top of that, the writing had some pretty big flaws. Of many, here is one example:

The big man chuckled. “What would be my motive for telling you that?”
“Simple. I'll find out one way or another. Either you tell me now or I bother your loved ones about it.”
“Very well. There's something I like about letting you go on thinking your threats are effective with me. I suppose I admire your bluster.”

i'm excited about this one...

ok, done. so i'm left with an overall feeling of “meh,” but when i think about specific bits of writing and/or story devices i am impressed by them individually. the whole just doesn't seem to represent the sum of the parts potentials.

so the book is a sci-fi noir detective dystopia, which has happened very successfully in the past. i think part of it is the weakness of the mystery, it's pretty easy to pick out the what really happened in the first 50 pages. also, some of the plot serves to put ticks in the sci-fi column and in the dystopia column, but does little else. there is nothing to sew the things together and as a result the story feels very shallow and disconnected.

the writing on the other hand is really nicely done. this guy has got a way with words, i wonder if he's written anything else...

Interesting... Mixing a strange, dystopic future with old-school gumshoe fare.