Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan

Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan is a satisfying blend of his previous novels, equal parts of his hard-boiled Kovacs series and Market Forces, his recent Road Warrior meets Halliburton social treatise. If Andrew Vachss wrote science-fiction, this is what he’d write.

As with all of Morgan’s work, you’ll get a healthy dose of pulse-pounding action sequences and grisly crime descriptions. I’m not a horror buff and I don’t generally like gore. However, Morgan makes it accessible by delivering these sequences without the giddy glee or overly dramatic flair others employ. It’s a very straight-forward factual description - a nearly academic deconstruction of the brutality of what he’s envisioning. You’ll understand the appeal if you like CSI or Criminal Minds.

Th1rte3n continues Morgan’s science-fiction detective genre and delivers Carl Marsalis, a ‘Thirteen’, or genetically altered human who works as a hard-case bounty hunter. The back cover of the uncorrected proofs I obtained calls Marsalis “a hit man who has lost his desire to kill.” This, frankly, isn’t accurate. Marsalis is a genetically-modified soldier with increased aggression and machismo. He’s built to kill, is damn good at it, and doesn’t mind doing so for profit or revenge. It’s not a perfect life, but it’s the hand he’s been dealt and he’s a realist.

Marsalis is hired by agents of the governing body of Mars after one of their spaceships is ‘compromised’ by another Thirteen. The ship splashes into the ocean, filled with the remains of the other passengers, eaten by the renegade Thirteen. Using genetic trace the team has linked the escaped Thirteen to numerous seemingly unrelated murders across the country. Marsalis is the necessary evil they turn to as the body count rises without any further progress on capturing their suspect.

There’s a bit of rote material, necessary for the full plot, in which Marsalis bonds with his new ‘partner’, Sevgi Ertekin. It’s a satisfying tale of sleuth as the two follow the tangents, misdirection and clues to arrive at a final epiphany. In the end, the whole crime feels a little bit like a stretch, but the rest of the novel is strong enough to overcome this obstacle.

The world Morgan creates is a future fractured by racism and religion. Unlike his Kovacs novels, Morgan’s dialog is often a direct discussion of the topics he wishes to analyze and present to readers. Th1rte3n isn’t for you if you’re turned off by topics like the nature of man, of how society evolved, of Fundamentalism, of nature versus nurture and the corrupting influence of power. These direct miniature essays are peppered within the dialog, bringing introspection and intelligence to the inventive future world and hard-edge action sequences.

I recommend Richard K. Morgan’s Th1rte3n as a good way to introduce yourself to Morgan’s work. If you’re entertained and provoked, you’ll have plenty of great reading ahead of you by delving into his prior work.
AddThis