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 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.

Interesting setting for a noir-style crime novel. It doesn't quite capture the Chandler vibe, the hero is slightly too nice, but it's decent attempt and a fun read. Somewhere in the future, medical tech has progressed and a wonder drug been invented. T7, it completely resets the body, rebuilding it from the initial genetic code back up to fully grown again, whilst retaining all (nearly) mental capacity. This has several benefits it completely heals any damage, and clears any disease. It also grants another lifetime's worth of living before damage starts to accumulate again, and the dose can be repeated. But as with any panacea it comes with some side-effects. Trivially it's very painful for several months as it isn't fast. It's very expensive and access to it is heavily controlled by the family who invented it. More importantly it also doubles the body's normal growth, so people who have taken it even once are larger, stronger heavier - Titans.

Cal Sounder is not a Titan. He's a consultant for the police in an unspecified city region. He does have several connections to the Family though, and his precise consultancy is tidying up any crimes that may touch Titan interests - given their power and influence they aren't going to be convicted of anything, but justice must still be seen to be done. Cal ensures that all the forms can be honestly completed. He has contacts everywhere (this does give the noir vibe) and so knows all the details. He is therefore somewhat surprised when he's called out to what seems to be a normal suicide/murder. On close inspection though the youthful looking professor is actually somewhat tall, and according to his ID, 91 years old. An incognito Titan. While they're not totally immune to everything, this is very surprising.

Fairly fast paced, the motivations of long-lived characters are somewhat obstruse, but it all makes sense in the end. I'm not convinced by some of the violence, but the setting is fun. ( )

Set in the future, this is a detective story of greed but also of abuse and desire to live forever. It isn't so much a world-building book, the world seems very familiar, it is what can be given to people who are ill or injured to repair them that is different. T7, given as an injection, repairs the body but also makes it grow and so there are a few very tall/wide/extremely long-limbed people who are known as Titans. Not many because you need a very lot of money to receive this 'treatment'.

When one of these titans is killed, Cal Sounder is called in to solve the case. He is not a policeman but a consultant to the police and so can be denied if things do not go well. What Sounder does well is to straddle the world of normal people and Titans, law-abiding and criminal, rich and poor and needs to draw on all of these groups to solve the case with the answer right under his nose.

There are a few elements of sci-fi other than the T7 itself such as a self-healing putty that you can place in shot wounds in people to heal them and a key card which is injected into a person and then dissolves after 24 hours providing a vitamin shot. What the story needed was a device that would enable people to change the way they looked and instead of plastic surgery, Harkaway took the sci-fi route. This isn't a criticism, in fact it is quite an original solution to the problem, it's just that the sci-fi goes no deeper than that. The story that lies behind it is as old as time. ( )

I loved everything but the ending, which majorly dampened my feelings overall. ( )

Fun to read. Has Harkaway's trademark plot depth with twists. I am not particularly fond of the noir style that he attempts here though, and don't think he should pursue that full time. ( )