Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Date Read: April 5 to 6, 2015
Read Count: 1
Recommended by: list of past Hugo Award nominees
Recommended for: fans of hardboiled sci-fi
If Hammett and Chandler were to dabble in sci-fi, I think the result would look something like this novella.
Miles Flint is a retrieval artist and his job is to locate the “Disappeared,” people who have gone into hiding and whose former existence has been permanently erased from all databases. Flint tracks them down for an exorbitant fee because he’s good at his job and known in the business as the best money could buy, but he isn’t without scruples. Sometimes certain people need to stay disappeared, like for instance, witnesses in high profile cases who want to start a new life somewhere else far from their old world. There are lots of reasons for someone to disappear permanently and most of then have to do with escaping assassinations. In those cases, Flint is fine with letting those people be. He wants nothing to do with helping assassins locate their targets.
That’s the set-up to this long, multi-book series which takes place on the moon, and this novella is a short but expensive introduction to Flint and his job. The plot is about a case Flint couldn’t turn turn even though he knew he should have.
A young woman from a corporate dynasty hires him to find her mother and sister. Her father is on his deathbed and once he dies, the missing sister stands to inherit his share of the empire because she, the young woman, could not because she’s a clone. There are laws against clones inheriting the family fortune. Flint knows at once he should turn the job down–he has a bad feeling about it–but he just couldn’t resist the mystery or the woman. So he takes the job. What follows is an interesting look into birthrights and legitimate heirs in this new age of space exploration.
Miles Flint is a throwback to the private eyes of those early hardboiled days. Brash and candid, the character has a bluntness and directness that weed out sob stories and cut right through bullshit–so maybe more of a Hammett-type character than Chandler. He assesses people in a cool apathetic manner that allows him to judge their intentions and gauge whether or not they’re out to kill the Disappeared people they claim to seek. Being able to tell the difference is the point of his job, really, and something he takes pride in.
The concept of being Disappeared is a gray area. It’s like being on the run, but there’s no running. Your existence is wiped from all databases, you move to a new planet where no one knows who you are, and no one from your old life can find you. If the person you hired to make you disappear were any good, you stay disappeared.
Here’s where it gets murky though. Disappearing allows actual criminals the same chances of survival as innocent people who have been similarly marked for death. I find this concept very interesting. It’s one of the few things that’s motivating me to pick up the next book because the writing, although gets the job done, is just okay. It leans more towards telling than showing, and there are quite a few long passages of explanation nestled in between the action. But that’s too be expected as this novella is literally an intro, and the info-dumps are necessary to introduce the setting, story, and Miles Flint’s precarious job.
All in all, a good story and solid start to what I hope will be an interesting series. I also hope it will be a new favorite series which I can fall back on as Rusch is currently at book #13 at the time of this review and she’s still writing for this series.
From Cover to Cover 