". . . that guy must be the unluckiest man on the face of this Earth. Unless he had enemies. You think he had enemies? Because I fucking think he had at least one that I can think of."
So recently I was reading Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway after a friend of mine told me it was out; ordinarily I'd be a day-zero reader of anything of his but I'd missed it for whatever reason. It's good, by the way, a little bit of social commentary wrapped up in a sort of technology mystery story ribbon, but also remarkably short by his standards and I don't really have much to say about it. However, in the afterward it mentioned that he'd written two other novels under an entirely different pen name than his usual one which I also hadn't heard of. So I ran out and got those (figuratively I mean, just logged into the Kindle storefront) and nearly immediately got buzzsawed by the first chapter. I set it down and then looked up more information on what exactly the hell was going on here and discovered an interview that he'd done with himself which explains that this is entirely the opposite of a morally uplifting novel. I suppose that would make it more of an infernally downlifting novel? So I went back to it and it's great, but I can't help but wonder if liking this is a character flaw or not.
There were a couple of things I was thinking of while reading it in particular. The first is the really excellent 2009 blaxploitation parody Black Dynamite, which is the sort of parody that pokes fun at the source material by taking it entirely seriously and just turning up the elements to an absurd degree. For instance you don't have a parody of a tough guy, you have an actual tough guy who's simply invincible and ends up in a battle to the death with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. I was also thinking about the "Godzilla Threshhold", which is a TV Tropes page, defined as a situation that's so dire that any plan becomes reasonable regardless of the cost. Maybe also a little bit of Cormac McCarthy because in his Truhen persona he's apparently allergic to most punctuation marks but there you go.
Anyway the novel features Jack Price, who starts out as a very wealthy and successful retail cocaine dealer. A lot of Harkaway's previous protagonists have been police or military (although I guess there was a merchant banker in Gnomon and a watch repair guy who ended up as a criminal in Angelmaker), so this is a little bit of a departure. Price narrates the story throughout and is clearly a very intelligent and funny guy who is perfectly happy to not rock the boat too much - he's perfectly aware that selling cocaine is against the law but tries to order his affairs such that when cocaine becomes legal he'll become legitimate by printing out a business card and won't have to change any of his other operations. Or at least that's what he says, but he also does a little bit of bribing the police to ignore his operations and incidentally take out some of his competition if they become troublesome. Also there's a little incident with a crazy and dangerous person on the crosstown train that Price takes care of with somewhat less concern than you'd expect. What I'm saying is that ol' Jack here may not be entirely on the level about how chill and peaceful he is.
Then the lady on the floor below him gets taken out execution-style, which concerns him. Not that he cared for Didi Fraser at all, either in an actual human way or his own particular cheerful sociopathic way, in fact he considered her to be irritating at best. But he has to be concerned that this might have been intended as a message to him, or an attempt to get at him, or even just that it might attract attention to him somehow, so he makes a desultory effort to see if anyone's heard anything about this. Just asking a couple of questions to people causes three guys to show up at his house to beat the crap out of him. And then it's on.
He wasn't expecting the three guys in his house, which is how they got the drop on him, but after figuring out who sent them (at least the coordinator, not the ultimate source) he offers to let bygones be bygones for a token $50 million indemnity. The contact offers him twenty bucks, and Price says he'll keep the offer open until midnight, and shortly thereafter Price discovers that his mystery opponent has retained the services of the Seven Demons, a flashy and psychopathic mercenary group that's much better known for destabilizing entire countries than just killing one random guy. So Price is now up against the equivalent of a criminal nation-state with nothing except his own wits and his command of the gig economy, and he thinks it's great.
You see, what the Seven Demons might have wanted to know prior to taking this job is that Price is not just a clever psychopath, but completely twisted and insane and had been waiting his whole life for an excuse to abandon proportionate response. Most people, they would probably say they'll do whatever it takes to save their own life, but when it comes down to the ultimate meaning of whatever there's still going to be some lines there. Price legitimately doesn't give a shit about collateral damage; it's not like he's going out of his way to destroy property or bystanders but he's not losing sleep over it either. This makes him a match for the Demons, who have a reputation to uphold and obtained it mostly through terror, so having ever associated with Price in the past is a sure way to lower your life expectancy. Or for that matter sort of vaguely looking like Price and being on a plane or train that Price might have been on.
So in some books of this type the question of who murdered Didi Fraser might be very significant to the overall plotline, but although Price actually does solve this mystery he does it mostly in passing. By that point the major focus has become the struggle between him and the Demons, because Price inflicts damage on them that their reputation can't let slide; it's not even so much about them fulfilling the contract anymore, they just have to show that they can't be defeated. It's not even really about escalation, either, because both sides immediately pursue the most extreme methods they can conceive of.
For just one example, the Demons undercut Price's business model by selling their own branded cocaine on his turf. I'm not sure what a typical proportionate response to this would be, possibly some pistol-whippings or shootings or something, but what Price does is purchase some of the competing cocaine through cutouts, add some anthrax to it, and then resell it again through some other cutouts, which totally kills the Demons' cocaine brand identity. And that's possibly one of the least crazy things that Price does throughout this novel.
This is specifically the part that made me think of Black Dynamite, because how the hell would this guy even think of such a thing, and also even if he did, how would he happen to just have some anthrax sitting around for an occasion like this? Admittedly the narrative does provide some explanation, but still. Price and the Demons constantly battle each other in violation of all laws, decency, and common sense, and I'm not sure how much you're supposed to take it seriously, but it is a hell of a ride.
I've read and enjoyed a lot of books with the central hook that you have some sort of antiheroic badass against a cabal of evil dudes who are much, much worse. This one coquettishly teases you that it's the same kind of thing, but it's really not. I think Price is more sympathetic than the Demons in general, after all he was minding his own business until the Demons accepted a contract on his life, it's not like he antagonized them or even knew who these people were before everything went straight to hell. Also, he just generally seems like a lot more fun to hang around. But again that seems is doing a lot of work there, I'm pretty sure that Price does not have your back in any conventional sense if you actually need something from him. He's certainly not going to risk his life for you, that's for certain. Although I guess he does spare a dog at one point, but even in that case there's something in it for him.
Anyway if this sounds like something you'd enjoy then it almost certainly is, but you might feel guilty afterwards and it's possible that the book was written in a confused and angry frame of mind to lower the goodness of humanity overall.
