Black Man is Richard Morgan’s most recent piece of SF noir before he embarked on his journey in to fantasy writing – it remains to be seen whether he will return to this kind of fiction in the future, but if he doesn’t (and I really hope he does) then this is a truly great way to leave the genre. This is a book with more of a sense of purpose that Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs books (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies), deeper and less stylized, with a clearer view of the themes it wants to address. Humanity, in a plausible continuation of present-day science, made alterations to its own genetic blueprint, creating new sub-species to fulfil specific roles: Bonobos, women bred especially to be sexually available and receptive; hibernoids, specially adapted to operate for eight months on little or no sleep but who then have to hibernate for the other four; and the Variant Thirteens – bred to be soldiers, trained killers, they were intended to embody the savagery of ancient man before the adaption of the human race to be sedentary farmers made such instincts anachronistic. Humanity has abandoned these experiments, and is now trying to cope with the consequences of the existence of all the genetically modified humans it has created and unleashed. That’s where Carl Marsalis comes in.

Marsalis is a Thirteen, and in the best tradition of setting a thief to catch a thief, he now works for the UN Genetic Licensing Authority tracking down and bringing back other Thirteens, dead or alive. Following humanity’s change of heart about genetic manipulation, the Thirteens were given the option to leave the planet and head for Mars, newly colonised and in need of settlers, especially hardy and self-sufficient ones; or to enter reservations. Marsalis originally took the Mars option, but won the repatriation lottery and came back. Perhaps more scarred than he realises by his childhood training regime and the reality of his removal from first his genetic mother and then his foster mother, he is capable of extreme violence and great cunning; but he has a soft side too, which is what lands him in jail in Florida, entrapped in to offering to pay for an abortion for a prostitute he hardly knows.

Marsalis is rescued from incarceration by investigators from COLIN (the COLony INitiative that oversees the settlement of Mars) – they need a bloodhound to track down a rogue Thirteen who managed to smuggle himself on to an automated return flight from Mars. Awoken early from stasis, the stowaway ate the other passengers to stay alive – and to compound that grisly crime, has embarked on a killing spree back on Earth. Marsalis is the best man to track him down, and the manhunt is a pretty bumpy ride, taking in the criminal underworld, multiple assassination attempts, and many different regions of a world that’s politically very different to the one we know. Eventually, Marsalis and his colleagues uncover a conspiracy that has its roots in the dark days of genetic engineering, the lawless frontier of manipulating the human genome for cynical gain.

Black Man is a convoluted, taut and effective thriller. Marsalis, despite his willingness to use savage violence (which is after all how he was genetically engineered) is a more sympathetic lead than Takeshi Kovacs, and the third person narration distances the book somewhat from most of Morgan’s previous work. The future, where Mars is being settled and the USA has torn itself apart, is extremely well realised, and the technology is plausible while never overshadowing what is in many ways a very old-fashioned conspiracy and cover-up plot. What this book shares with all of Morgan’s previous output is a bleak view of humanity and what it’s willing to do to itself; it explores prejudice (genetic variants are known disparagingly as “twists”) and the lies and deception that are practiced by people and governments in the name of progress. Highly recommended.

Note: in the US this book was published with the title Thirteen.

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