By Adam Christopher

Tor/Titan, out now

Ray Electromatic asks himself what it’s all about in his deadly new case…

The middle part of Adam Christopher’s LA Trilogy, featuring the last robot, Ray Electromatic, now working as a private investigator/assassin in 1960s Los Angeles, is as much fun as the first, with Christopher throwing in plenty of allusions to other classics of the genre – and guest starring a certain Brit whose career path is slightly different in this altered world than in ours. And not a lot of people know that.

In the first novel, Made to Kill, Christopher set up certain parameters which at the time I wondered might be something of a restriction on storytelling going forward, but he has cleverly used these to emphasize where things aren’t quite going Ray’s way. There are still plenty of questions left to answer about the situation – in fact, given what we discover in the final showdown between Ray and the villains of the piece, there are rather more of them now – and part of me hopes that we don’t get everything laid out neatly in the conclusion so that Ray’s adventures can continue.

Christopher has fun with the tropes of both pulp sci-fi and the private eye genres (Raymond Chandler’s famous comment about science fiction getting a reference up front) and he’s created a fast paced thriller with a doll to die for, dark-glassed hoodlums and the mafioso to beat all Mafiosi. Recommended.

Verdict: Down these mean streets a robot must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. 9/10

Paul Simpson