Titanium Noir

What style! An archetype of noir fiction. A cynical smart-ass P.I., a woman (a couple of them, actually), the seamy underbelly of the city, the rich, powerful, and untouchable—this novel has them all, in a science fictional setting. OK, the P.I.’s heart of gold maybe gleams in the light a little more than it would in a perfect noir, but that’s OK by me. It’s a satisfying mystery that depends on the SFnal plot device, so it’s neither gratuitously SFnal nor gratuitously noir.

I loved the writing:

“There’s something in my throat. Figure it must be rage.
“Maurice looks back at me through narrow eyes. He’s full of the same thing, viscous and violent. There’s a lot of fight hormones in this room. A lot of inhalable bad

show more

decisions.”

show less

I easily fell into the fun of reading Nick Harkaway's 2023 novel Titanium Noir--his first to be written for the post-lockdown world. While not "morally disimproving" (his phrase) like the Aiden Truhen books, it has the same rapid vernacularity, with lots of circumspect and prickly dialogue, droll asides, and recurring violent mayhem. It is a "detective" tale, but it is not a baroque doorstop like Gnomon (2017). Also, the narrator is a private investigator, "not a cop" as he often insists, and thus quite distinct from the Sergeant of Tigerman (2014). I think it is more comparable to The Gone-Away World (2008) in being a snfal adventure built around a central fantastic speculation.

That cornerstone speculation is the "Titanium 7" medical show more treatment that rejuvenates and enlarges patients--at prohibitive financial cost, so that it is a perquisite and stigma of the "speciation rich" (16). Protagonist Cal Sounder has special expertise in crime connected with the T7 elite, and the story begins with the discovery of a murder where the victim is a Titan. It is irresistible to read the story as a politico-economic fable, and Harkaway even has a character declaim, "God has been a socialist since 1848 when Karl Marx explained things to him" (173).

However, when I finished the book, I realized that if it were any kind of allegory, it had instead to do with Titans as ancestors of the gods, and the creative powers of writers. This book is one which seems to be performing a rite dedicated to the shade of Harkaway's then-recently-deceased father John le Carré, as signaled by the epigram from Damon Runyan: "You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year."

The plot is lively, with a few twists that are surprising and some likely ones that don't happen, despite an ending that is borderline-inevitable. The six longish chapters and short seventh are each sufficiently absorbing to read in a single sitting, and they contain many internal breaks to permit pauses as needed. I read the book in under a week without being especially dedicated to it. In just that brief window, I feel like the sarcastic hard-boiled voice of Cal Sounder has become a friend, and I'm a little sad to part from him. show less

I don’t know what I really think of this book. Titanium Noir is a fusion of science fiction and crime, written in the style of Raymond Chandler. Instead of Philip Marlowe hustling and wise-cracking his way around the streets of Los Angeles, we have Cal Sounder in an unknown city of the near future, consulting for the police department in a case that focuses on the murder of a Titan; a giant human who has received treatment to extend life and introduce new vigour and with repeated treatments might expect to live for ever. But with each treatment they diverge further from human norms. There are only 8000 such people in the world and to become one requires either great wealth or great power.

Titanium Noir is a fairly short novel but I show more made heavy weather of it initially. There’s nobody to like here. Everyone feels dishonest and grubby and the world—or as much of it as we can see—is dangerous, grimy and joyless. Sounder and the Titans favour seedy bars, like Victor’s, which have the feel of a Berlin club from the Weimar Republic—hotbeds of vice and violence, where anything goes. Cal is a character who you can’t like and that means it’s hard to get a grip on who he is and what motivates him. We know that he has connections, at some point he has been involved with Stefan, the creator of the Titan treatment and the gatekeeper to the world it opens up. That gives him access which enables him to investigate the murder, but it’s not immediately obvious why and nor is it clear why the police can’t just do it themselves--though that's a question which is resolved late Rin the book.

I am all for books which cross or blur genres and applaud the author for attempting this one. The snappy dialogue and deadpan delivery are very Chandleresque and done well. It works for this dystopian future setting too. But I needed some light. Even Philip Marlowe usually got some time with the girl and experienced a bit of glamour, but Cal’s life is just grim. Dark, grimy and soulless, and that made this a bit of a slog. It is one of those books that you have to say are really well-written and clever but unfortunately not enjoyable. show less

What a ride it's been! Reading Nick Harkaway's latest has cemented his status as a firm favorite, even if I disliked his previous The Gone Away World because it was simply too out there.

In this one, Harkaway reins it in. Oh, this story is out there all right, but in a measured and intentional way. Our hero, one Cal Sounder, acts as a consultant to the police in a made-up city that is perhaps a fascimile of New York City, I may be wrong. He's also a specialist in a class of citizens known as Titans, so called because they're people dosed with a high-octane drug called Titanium 7 which grants them eternal youth and many physical advantages. There's the small matter of them growing to giant size as well, but that is acceptable to these show more super-rich folks who are besotted by immortality.

Thus, when a Titan turns up dead, Cal is on the case. But there are unusual things about this dead Titan, mainly that he hasn't been acting like a typical Titan. Naturally, Cal must sniff deeper. He must liase with the smart-alec police force, the redoubtable forensic pathologist Musgrave, his own boss, the cranky Giles Gratton, and several others. It is here that the writing really shone: Harkaway pulls off the noir detective patter so very well! Pitch perfect throughout and with seamless pacing, he leads us through suitable amounts of deceit, intrigue, danger, and heartbreak.

Cal's own source of heartbreak is the daughter of the Titan uber-boss; Cal and Athena used to be married, and there's a big story there. Cal's professional position and his own pride prevent him from getting with Athena again, and this was all satisfying. Then the humor! The gangster Doublewide and his aide Mr. Zoegar I found hilarious. There wasn't much of a femme fatale in the story, although I suppose that Mini character will suffice.

Very nice, Nick! With a smashing, smart little offering like this one that ends as it does, I almost think you're slyly planning a -dare I say it- sequel? That would be quite welcome, methinks. Good outrageous fiction that goes under the genre of sci fi is pretty darn scarce in these parts and readers like moi who like our SF in small doses would be very appreciative indeed. show less

This is a book where noir, science fiction, and mystery meet. Okay, Philip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep might fit that category, too, but it’s more unconventional than this one.

What’s conventional about this one? Cal Sounder is hired as a consulting detective to solve the murder of Roddy Tebbit, an otherwise unassuming professor of biology who researches algae. One big twist — Tebbit is a “Titan.” Titans are rejuvenated human beings, brought back to youth via a “T7” treatment that puts the subject through a puberty-like experience, leaving their bodies renewed and returned to youth.

T7 can extend a person’s life almost indefinitely, with repeated treatments. It certainly has side effects, most obviously show more physical size. That puberty-like experience raises Titans to abnormal heights. Titans are not that hard to pick out of a crowd.

To become a Titan you have to be wealthy and well-connected. Stefan Tonfamecasca controls the supply and application of T7, and he and his family derive tremendous social and political power from it.

Tebbit was not himself a member of the Tonfamecasca family, nor did he have any obvious relationships to it. How did he become a Titan, and how did such an otherwise inconspicuous person get on a path that led to an execution-style murder?

Sounder is hired by the police department to investigate the murder in part because he is expendable. The police department itself does not want to risk butting heads with the Tonfamecasca family, and they know right off the bat that the investigation is liable to lead to sensitive territory.

And it does. In fact, it leads deep into the Tonfamecasca family itself, its history, and some of its deepest family secrets.

Sounder himself has connections to the family, not least his ex, Athena Tonfamecasca, Stefan’s daughter and second-in-charge. Athena remains Sounder’s ex in part because she is now a Titan herself — an orbit beyond that of ordinary people like Sounder.

One of the most intriguing themes in the story is exactly that distance between Titans and the rest of humanity. It raises the biggest philosophical question of the book — what happens when immortality and for that matter, superhuman abilities, become available to the economically and political privileged? One answer is that they become even more economically and politically privileged, in fact, a quantum leap beyond.

But they remain human in other respects. And there’s the rub, in fact the full on friction between Titan status and human emotions and foibles.

That’s enough, so I don’t get into spoiler territory.

The book is a very enjoyable ride, with that one theme raising it above the “mere entertainment” level. It’s smart, and it’s kind of fun to live the future through such a patently noir lens as the one Harkaway gives us with Cal Sounder. show less

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 show more case.

Overall, plenty to get your teeth into in this SF noir. show less

Titanium Noir is an absolute triumph of vibes. Cal Sounder is a private eye who specializes in a very special field: the affairs of the Titans, the tremendously wealthy, immortal, and large biomedical elite of society. So when Roddy Tebbit, seven feet tall and 91 years old, is found shot in the head in his apartment, it's Cal's job to find answers. Justice is not a thing that happens.

The noir detective is a classical liminal figure, standing Janus-faced at the boundary between civil society and the criminal underworld. Cal's liminality is doubled since he also stands between Titans and humans. He wanders through his winter city on an alpine lake browbeating various unfriendly contacts and trying to assemble the pieces of Roddy's life show more and death. Nothing involving the lives of Titans is clean or easy or just, and Roddy's murder is tied up with an ancient sin of the Titans. Because the basic rule of noir is that the very powerful are also very human, and their human weaknesses (sex, dominance, oblivion, kindness) are their undoing.

Titanium Noir also follows Raymond Chandler's dictum, "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." There's plenty of violence, and fortunately for Cal he's a preternaturally gifted dirty fighter. Some of the secondary characters sparkle: Stefan Tonfamecasca, creator of the titan process, house-sized, capable of laughing a man to pieces. Athena, Stefan's daughter and right-hand, and Cal's ex, the two of them joined by longing and separated by Cal's lingering humanity. Victor, a bar owner who runs a Titan-focused establishment where anything can happen, and does. Many of the less memorable characters have a perfectly tuned weariness and cynicism. Harkaway's dialog and description is like lightening.

Yet there's a weak spot in this book, a gap that vibes can't bridge, and that's the character of Doublewide, a criminal boss of oddly delicate temperament and trust, and also a freak of the titanization process, who became much wider but not taller. Doublewide wore out his welcome in about five pages, and absolutely fails to serve as a counter to Stefan Tonfamecasca in any narrative sense, and yet provides the vital clue that sets Cal along the path towards answers, through ancient Titan history become fairytale.

Vibes are good. Greatness needs more. show less