When a university professor who had received life extending treatments that have side effects making the recipient bigger and stronger Cal Sounder is called in to help the police. Navigating his way through a seamy underworld of crime and corruption as well as through the high society of people wealthy enough to become giants living long beyond the human life span Cal uses his street smarts and acute reasoning skills to discover who was involved and why. I would definitely recommend it to readers of Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson and The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal who like mystery mixed with science fiction involving intelligent, astute sleuths.

It is a great combination of good old fashioned noir and bio science fiction.

Titanium Noir was the first novel I'd read by Nick Harkaway, and I'll definitely be reading more. It's perfection. A noir mystery in a dystopian future, it follows investigator Cal as he looks into the death of a Titan--the nickname given to the fabulously wealthy and nearly immortal. It reminded me in all the good ways of Altered Carbon, but it's fresh and original and beautiful. I can't recommend it enough.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing me with an eARC of Titanium Noir in exchange for my honest review!

I was quite intrigued by the premise's blending of sci-fi and noir fiction, but this turned out to be the kind of book that I'm feeling very tepid towards. It's too bad, because the worldbuilding that this creates around the Titans and the gritty atmosphere it sets up do engage me. But I just couldn't get all that invested in the story and the characters. It didn't help that the complicated plotting made it somewhat difficult for me to keep track of what's happening (if you were to ask me to describe the plot beats, I wouldn't be able to tell you half of them). That being said, I was interested enough by the potential here that I'd be up for checking out more of Nick Harkaway's work.

Overall, I'm officially rating Titanium Noir 2.5 out of 5 stars, with 2 stars being the rounded-down score.

This intriguing, highly original, grabbing sci-fi murder mystery plunges you into a future Earth where a pharma company has come up with the ultimate fountain-of-youth genetic therapy shot, which naturally only can be afforded by billionaires or close relatives of the CEO founder. These souped-up, bulked-up, towering humans can live for centuries, and even longer with additional shots. They’re keeping the number of so-called Titans low, to ensure maximum power, maximum wealth accumulation, and elitism, and have come to look at the rest of humanity as mere mortals of little worth or consequence.

Bridging the world of the uber-Titans and the rest of humanity comes Cal Sounder, a private investigator working with the police on criminal incidents that involve Titans. Cal has managed to work in both worlds due to his long-standing girlfriend Athena, a daughter of the Tonfamecasca family who founded the T7 therapy and who got turned into a Titan herself to keep her from dying.

The novel opens with a dead Titan lying in his apartment in a pool of blood, and Cal assigned to figure out just what the heck could possibly have happened that resulted in a Titan murder. Cal has to summon up all his connections across the city along with all his wits to start making connections. He also unexpectently finds himself in mortal danger due to his investigation. With humor, amazing characterizations, and unexpected plot twists, this book is fantastic.

So hoping that Harkaway comes up with new challenges for Cal to tackle in future sequences!

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

Titanium Noir reminded me of a legal thriller I enjoyed a few months ago, so I was eager to give this one a read. This follows a specialized detective who only deals with cases involving individuals called Titans, very wealthy people who can afford a certain treatment that will make them bigger, stronger, and live longer. In this one, a Titan has been murdered and it’s Cal’s job to figure out who killed him. This leads him all over the city and straight into a ghost story that may or may not be true, as well as some history of how Titans came to be.

Honestly, I think the idea of this story was more interesting than the actual execution. I liked Cal. He was a fantastic character to follow with a really fun voice. He’s very much a rough and tumble kind of guy, but there was a softer side to him that I liked when it came out. It made him feel a little more human. I also really liked how the Titans were characterized. I still can’t really fathom how big these Titans must have been, but the ones Cal came across were interesting, from the giant of a man who holds all the power to the one who was murdered who had an interesting history. I liked that there were pros and cons to the procedure, and that there’s always a cost. At the beginning of the story, I was really engaged with what was going on and trying to figure out who killed the Titan. I loved the noir feel to it, and I think I would have liked this more if it hadn’t derailed a bit.

At some point in the second half, Cal is told a version of a ghost story. It’s a story of how the Titan gene was discovered. Then he’s told another version. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another one I’m forgetting about. I feel like he went from finding the Titan’s killer to figuring out the truth behind the ghost story. It was disappointing and I found the story dragged from that point on. I was no longer invested in who killed the Titan, which was the primary reason why I wanted to read this, because no one else felt interested until the very end.

Titanium Noir really took the noir-style and held tight to it. I loved the feel of the story, but the story itself felt like it couldn’t compare with the main character. Actually, I felt like the story failed him because Cal could have been incredible in an incredible story. Instead, I felt like he spent part of the story just chasing this ghost story and another part just chasing his tail, because he only felt like he was going in circles that only sometimes changed direction.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

A murder-mystery that needs to be solved by a gumshoe detective, but in a near-future techno/cyber world? Yes, sign me up! A wonderfully structured plausible society built on the techno have/have nots. Good set up, great characters and a satisfying conclusion.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.

Tapping out at ~40% on this one. I read Gnomon when it came out and found it to be right in my wheelhouse in terms of genre/playfulness, but a little frustrating/too clever for its own good. With that in mind, I was interested to read another book by Harkaway that was more concise and focused, but it turns out something about all the noir flavoring here really just isn't my thing. Perhaps it will be yours!

Titanium Noir brings together two of my favorite genres, Mystery and SciFi. In Nick Harkaway's skillful hands, the story of murder and mayhem joined with Science Fiction/futuristic villainy produces a story that pulls the reader along at speed until the satisfying ending.

This book was just a delight to read. Sharp, funny and so snarky. I love noir and this is definitely noir mixed with super heroes. These Titans are definitely more The Boys than Superman and that is perfect too. I'm kind of thinking this is a one-off, which is a shame because I would love to spend more time with these characters. Highly recommend.

If there’s one fusion of genres I’ve come to appreciate a great deal in the last couple of years it’s science fiction and noir. It’s not a new genre, having roots going back 30+ years, but it’s new to me. The first novel I read with this kind of flavor to it was last year’s The Paradox Hotel, which I absolutely couldn’t put down (just like this book), rated five stars (just like this book), and which occupies a well-deserved spot on my crowded bookshelves (which this book does as well, thanks to Knopf and Penguin Random House). There’s something about the cold, implacable march of science with its empirical laws and rules of evidence and the cool, calm facade of a detective who has their own laws and rules of evidence to follow that simply creates a fascinating, mutually beneficial relationship that can result in some of the most fascinating stories about the human condition. Titanium Noir is a story that has a lot of story to tell and most of it isn’t pretty, but all of it is about some kind of love.

No noir novel is complete without a socioeconomic divide (in this case, a river and lake divide one side from the other–the rich and the not-rich). In the world of Titanium Noir, money doesn’t only mean you live in nicer houses and have better healthcare. It also means you might just make enough money to become a Titan. Not a titan of industry, but one of a select number of people who can afford to be injected with a genetic therapy formula called T7, which will rewind and repair all damage time or injury has inflicted on you. A literal bodily reset. The monetary cost is astronomical. Changes to your body? Yeah, there’s some of those too. You won’t ever be the same again and people will never look at you the same way again. You’re a Titan now, and there’s power in merely being you. The power exchange is too great to overcome now.

Our protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a private detective on paper. In reality, he walks the thin line between the police and the Titans. He looks into things on the Titan’s side of the fence for the police from time to time and he looks into things on the poorer side of town for the Titans from time to time. This time around, he’s been retained by the police as a consultant on a case a little too hot for them to handle: A Titan has been murdered.

The worldbuilding in this book is simply great. Take the gritty, icy streets of Chicago in winter and marry it to the neon city you’d see in an anime like Ghost in the Shell or Akira, and that’s the feel I got from the book. Crazy nightclubs, dirty dive bars, weird socialist social clubs, fusion restaurants, an elite university, a multinational conglomerate, apartment buildings, and a pig farm. This book visits a great many locales, all different from one another and fascinating in their own way given the landscape.

Cal has that same cool, implacable facade of a practiced detective, but with far more leeway than a badge. His morals are a lot more flexible, too. That’s why he’s good at his job. He’s an enigmatic and charismatic character. He’s far more than he seems and capable of far more than you’d be able to discern, but it’s not until the book puts him into a situation that you get to see that Cal Sounder is a man of quick reflexes, wit, resources, and more. He has the trademark cynicism and wariness that comes from being surrounded by criminals and death as a profession, but he has one bright thing in his life and he keeps going, knowing she’s still around and waiting.

The dialogue in this book is amazing. It’s all over the place in tone, just like human conversation should be, but you can read the shifts in tone as if they were being spoken and not written. It has razor-sharp wit, barbed sarcasm, tired musings over cups of bitter coffee, weary late-night conversations, exasperated arguments in hallways and alleyways, demented and dislocated words and phrases uttered under pain and duress, words softly spoken by soft lamplight in the late hours, and pessimistic rants from exhausted cops expressed at all hours of night and day.

The plot is engrossing from the start, leaving the book an absolute page-turner you can’t put down. It absolutely feels like you can’t stop reading, because you never know when something bonkers, bloody, revelatory, or just plain interesting is going to happen. The book just keeps moving because Cal just keeps on moving. Unless he’s hurt. Then he stops for a minute.

The ending might surprise you. It might not. I loved the ending, even though I guessed who the killer was. Keep in mind that the ending and the killer are two separate things. This is a story about love, after all. It’s just about different kinds of love. The killer and the ending are not about the same kinds of love. No matter what, though, this book is absolutely a killer read.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. I also received a physical early review copy of this book from Knopf and Penguin Random House as part of their influencer program (thank you). All opinions, thoughts, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Read/Crime Fiction/Crime Thriller/Dystopian Fiction/Murder Thriller/Mystery/Noir/Science Fiction

This is one of the best genre busting stories I've read in quite awhile. scifi, fantasy, thriller, fiction, whatever you want to call it, it's a great read. Nick Harkaway definitely gives us the noir part, it reads as one of the older detective novels, but with some very modern twists and turns. The development of the Titans is a unique take on the upper class' attitudes with quite a bit of snark thrown in for good measure. The community and supporting characters each add a distinctive "something" to the story, a sure sign of a skillful writer who knows how to get us hooked. His work is definitely different from anyone else. See for yourself.....

Utterly fantastic! Futuristic gumshoe with ultra rich, power hungry giants, a seedy underground, and a tender romantic tangle. It started a little slow for me, but took off with a bang and I couldn't get through it fast enough.

This book was a fantastic mix of sci-fi and mystery. I really enjoyed the world building and the characters were entertaining.

I love that we learn about the world through Cal Sounder's investigation into what happened to Roddy. It was a great way to introduce the world slowly without getting bogged down in details early on. I also appreciated the social commentary on the wealth and class gaps. Cal's sarcasm and banter made the book for me. The ending was a little predictable but there were a lot of enjoyable twists to get there.

I'd definitely recommend this book to sci-fi fans looking for a detective story.

Excellent read. Lives up to the term noir - while reading I felt like I was living in a black, white and grey world. I think I even saw Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall at one point.

Cal Sounder is a P.I. good with his fists, always knows what's up and since this is noir, cracks wise (not wisecracks) at the drop of a hat. He has special clients that have him do special jobs for them. And this one's a doozy.

Excellent world building and great plot. And Cal is a great protagonist. I could not stop thinking about this book and can't wait to read more about Cal Sounder.

5 stars - no hesitation.

I've started this book 3 times before finally finishing. As excited I was to read, it wasn't for me. The writing was choppyand disjointed. It didn't have that necessary flow. The characters was written in a weird way. I just couldn't get into this book. There were certain areas that made no sense. Even though this waa a 'short' read, a few chapters could have been eliminated. Not sure what the target audience was for the book. It's safe to say I wasn't it.

#NETGALLEY #TITANIUMNOIR. #NICKHARKAWAY

Nick Harkaway isn't very prolific, but all of his novels, including this one, are worth reading. In Titanium Noir he perfectly catches the voice of noir fiction - the "mean streets" and corrupt wealthy and shady cops and crimes fueled by various combinations of the seven deadly sins - while developing a first-rate detective hero and bringing the genre up to date. There is none of the nostalgia that plagues so many tough-guy detective stories.

And he also creates an extremely interesting near-future world, one in which our billionaire overlords have literally become larger-than-life demigods. I hope Harkaway has more stories set in this world.

The "noir" part of Titanium Noir is here for you in spades—a quintessential hard-boiled private investigator thriller, with organized crime, loads of violence, and plenty of dames who are bad news. The mystery wasn't that interesting but obviously it also wasn't as integral as all the fist fights and corrupt cops and clandestine meetings available in the solving. The "sci-fi" aspect of the story—secrets of immortality unlocked for select few, very wealthy or connected people can become younger but for *science reasons* this makes them physically larger and denser—mostly had me chuckling throughout. Would make at LEAST as good a movie as that one where everyone stayed young but had a watch that killed them when they ran out of money, and I bet you could get plenty of equally terrible puns out of the whole situation to boot.

In a near-future dystopia, Cal Sounder is a detective who is called in for the PD on "special" cases. However, when he shows up to the crime scene, he's surprised by the routineness of the murder. But this is not what it seems, as the murdered techie, is a Titan, a genetically altered elite. A dead Titan would be big news but a murdered one? That's just plain unheard of and it's right up Cal's alley. As the murder investigation intensifies, Cal begins to figure out what should have been a straightforward case, and it becomes clear he’s on the trail of a crime whose roots run deep into the dark heart of the world.
Hoping this is the start of a series!

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for this e-arc.*

I don't read a lot of noir as I'm not interested in dark, gritty, or depressing, and noir can be all three.

But the SF element drew me. The writing is a tour-de-force. Such tight, descriptive, stylish prose, blending noir and Blade Runner-esque mean streets with a SFnal overlay. What kept me going was Cal Sounder's sardonic humor, as well as the sense that he was a good person at the substrate.

Drugs is at the center of the crime/mystery, in this case one that can make "superhuman." To solve the case, Cal not only has to follow clues, but listen to the way people at the bottom of the heap view their world, which was especially well done.

But don't start this one late at night--the pacing starts frenetic from the gitgo and does not let up!

An interesting, gritty, and kind of bizarre (in a good way) take on the hard-boiled detective novel, with a very astute, blunt, sardonic main character and overall voice. Cal Sounder's intelligent approach to this most unusual murder investigation (which the reader is just dropped into without preamble) is used to examine broader issues that don't just apply to the futuristic world of the novel, but to ours as well, sadly, like wealth gaps, the privileges that money can buy (including immortality in one sense or another), greed, abuse, and accountability. These themes come together with the threads of the murder investigation to create very satisfying twists towards the end, at least some of which I definitely did not see coming.

Something I also enjoyed was the use of urban legends to build the complexity of the investigation. This is not something I've really seen deployed in the crime fiction that I've read. It serves as an opportunity to hear from the everyday people of this world, as well as a point of contrast to the rich people's narratives and what the truth of the matters really were in the end. It also makes a excellent point on how stories are truly dynamic; the narrative grows and changes, or is twisted, depending on your point of view, with the passage of time.

Overall, this was an excellent book, and the nature of this world and the story makes me wonder if there will be more novels set in this universe. That would certainly be interesting indeed.