Book Review: Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway

Titanium Noir is a noir novel first, set in an interesting world second. World-building and story take a backseat to tone and genre conventions, which is either a feature or a flaw depending on what you came for.

The main character, Cal Sounder, struck me as somewhat ridiculous: no meaningful background, no real character development, just an embodiment of the noir detective archetype. This is likely intentional, a genre conceit where the detective exists primarily as a lens through which we observe the world.

A Chandler Cast in a Strange City

At its heart, this is a murder mystery. A quiet, private man gets killed, and because the victim is a Titan, Cal Sounder gets the call. He is a private investigator who works closely with police on cases involving Titans, the ultra-wealthy elite made superhuman through repeated doses of the life-extending T7 drug. Most of the book follows Sounder as he navigates a cast of characters lifted straight from Raymond Chandler: a nightclub singer, a corrupt cop, a beautiful but neurotic woman, and so on. The core plot feels secondary to atmosphere and world. There are twists, turns, and some surprisingly violent sections, but the mystery exists in service to the setting rather than the reverse. I enjoyed some of the characters, though the plot itself fades from memory faster than the world Harkaway built around it.

The World of Stasis

What I found most compelling was thinking through the implications of a world ruled by a small cadre of superhuman Titans. They are apart from everyone else in how they look, how they act, and crucially, the time horizons that shape their thinking.

The world they rule is static, and that stasis makes perfect sense. If you intend to be immortal, you want predictability and control. You actively suppress black swan events, like widespread access to T7, because such disruptions threaten your position. This stasis manifests throughout the book: repeated references to 20th century films, archaic computing infrastructure, the absence of mobile phones. Some technologies have clearly advanced, medical facilities most notably, but these directly benefit the Titans.

If I were to construct the backstory, I would imagine T7 invented toward the end of the 20th century, with the Titans consolidating control in the early 21st. This explains the new city where they reside, built fresh for their purposes, while the rest of the world still references Brazil, Greece, Beijing, Mumbai. This is not a colony planet. It is Earth, transformed by Titan influence.

Verdict

A solid 6.5. The world stayed with me; the plot did not. I am not certain I would read a sequel if one arrives, though Harkaway clearly has ideas worth following.