The Long Arm Of Gil Hamilton (1981) - Plot & Excerpts
This book collects three novellas in the classic detective noir genre with a futuristic twist. Though, some of the ideas may be more paleofuture. Three things make this work, even though there are moments of "but we don't use moving sidewalks in our major cities!"1) Our hardboiled detective deals with one type of major crime: organlegging. Long before Repo! The Genetic Opera, there was Gil Hamilton, part of the UN task force that makes sure your spare body parts aren't cannibalized from your neighbor. Hamilton's world is full of medical advances in organ and tissue grafting, so you can imagine the kind of black market that's sprung up around procuring the parts. Like a police show where you only follow a vice cop, or the homicide department, The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton is dedicated to a division specialty.2) Detective noir plus. Everything a detective does, Hamilton does with futuristic flourish. If noir detectives smoke, he does a cigarette trick with his telekinetic third hand. (A cigarette is about the heaviest thing he can manage.) If noir detectives have loving secretaries, his secretary keeps tabs on him telepathically. If noir detectives run afoul of regular city police, well--something's gotta be constant across space and time.3) The Encyclopedia Brown wrap up. You know you love it. You come to the end of the story, and you can't wait to see how Encyclopedia Brown (or Sherlock Holmes or Shawn Spencer, etc.) is going to combine all the little clues into an obvious answer. Hamilton has exactly these sorts of revelations, but with clues you shouldn't understand. Except that the science woven through the narrative so well that a conclusion hinging on inertialess star drives is just as clear as any other "smoking gun" detail.
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