A Son of the Rock

Gollancz, 2016, 371 p.

I seem to have progressed into reading Newman’s series of Planetfall novels backwards. Before Mars and Atlas Alone I did read in the correct order (3 before 4) but this is number 2 in the sequence and I have not yet read Planetfall, the first.

Our viewpoint character here, Carlos Moreno, is indentured as a detective with the Ministry of Justice and very good at his job. He has an unfortunate history, though, as his mother famously went off on a one-way trip into space on a ship called Atlas (he has to dodge the occasional journalist wanting to know how he feels about that) and he spent time in Texas with a religious cult known as the Circle before escaping it and enduring various degrading situations until his indentiture, which is a contract from which he is unlikely ever to secure release. He is called in to investigate the death of Alejandro Casales, the leader of the Circle, in a hotel on Dartmoor. It looks like murder but (of course) something about the circumstances does not seem right to Carlos. His endeavours are complicated by the political situation with representatives of the Americans and of the political entity known as Norope as well as the MoJ requiring to be satisfied.

For most of the book this is more or less a police procedural novel albeit with Science Fictional trappings – that spaceship and the Artificial Personal Assistant, APA, chips with access to the internet most people have in their heads being the most obvious of these. Moreno’s APA is called Tia.

During the investigation, one of the hotel guests, Travis Gabor, asks to be interviewed last. His husband Stefan Gabor, an extremely wealthy man, is as nasty a piece of work as you could imagine. This turns out to be unfortunate for Moreno as Stefan is angered by Moreno’s delays and buys out what had seemed his unbreakable contract with the MoJ to force him to go back to the Circle to where Travis has in the meantime debunked.

In the Circle, where such things as APAs are non grata and those entering who are chipped must wear a nullifying bracelet, Moreno has an unwelcome reunion with his father and discovers the link between the dead Casales’s activities and the US gov-corp’s and Stefan Gabor’s plans for an Atlas 2.

It’s all well done and readable enough – Newman can write – but, while at least in this instalment the derivation of Newman’s characters’ expletive of choice, JeeMuh, is explained, it still seems torturously awkward to me.

Pedant’s corner:- Written – or at least published – in USian, lasagna (lasagne,) meters (metres,)  “‘They were just pr0n really’” (‘just porn’ seems to be the sense.) “none of the outer doors were locked” (None … was locked.) “Either side of the drive” (Each side,) “outside of” (just ‘outside’,) “off of” (just ‘off’,) “the brain activity created by keywords relating to the case are also attended to” (the brain activity …. is also attended to,) “‘an end to that pain, you. Held. On.” (‘to that pain. You. Held. On.’) “to the the” (only one ‘the’ needed,) “have me made into someone who” (have made me into someone who,) syllabi (in English the plural of syllabus is syllabuses. Syllabi is a false plural used by people who think the word derives from Latin. It doesn’t.)