Travel Documents 92: The Easytown Novels
Genre: near-future, synthetic intelligence, social change, neo-noir
The Dust Cover Copy
The Easytown Novels create a frighteningly real near future world beset by climate change, social depravity, moral ambiguity, and corporate greed. Easytown is city with a thousand stories and the hard-nosed homicide detective, Zach Forrest, is determined to learn them all....
Book 1 – The Immorality Clause: Easytown’s robotic pleasure clubs are a serial killer’s playground.
The futuristic slum in eastern New Orleans is a violent place where any vice can be satisfied – for a price. As long as the taxes are paid and tourists continue to flock to the city, businesses are allowed to operate as they see fit. When a string of grisly murders rocks the city, homicide detective Zach Forrest must hunt down the killer responsible before they strike again.
Book 2 – Tears of a Clone: Torture tourism is an illegal sport in Easytown – unless the victim is a clone, then nobody cares.
When Detective Forrest discovers the mutilated bodies of three clones in a garbage compactor, he’s shocked to learn of the multi-million dollar industry of torture tourism. He embarks on an unauthorized investigation and discovers that the truth behind the clone murders is more terrifying than he’d imagined.
Book 3 – West End Droids & East End Dames: Everything comes crashing down on Forrest when a rampaging cyborg attacks, disrupting his investigation into the death of a lowly thumper club doorman who knew too much. Before he can determine his next move, a beautiful evidence clerk lands on his doorstep and forces her way into his life. Meanwhile, the precinct chief tasks him to track down and stop the street doctors who build the abominations.
But, will doing so cost Zach more than he’d expected?
The Scene
Worldbuilding
The rain is coming down on the good ol’ New Orleans, and this rain is cold. It’s the kind of night for a long duster and a fedora, a night where the neon reflects from the puddles. And one tired cop walks the streets alone, on his way to a murder scene.
This is one of the few neo-noir cyberpunks that feels just as real as everyday life. The tech is futuristic, but it’s neither terrifyingly and malignantly powerful nor is it humanity’s salvation. It still fritzes and glitches. AI has gotten just smart enough to talk to us, but not smart enough to realize that saying ‘he’s unavailable due to being in jail on suspicion of murder’ is really unhelpful. Your toilet can analyze your urine and hearing its health advice every morning is mandated by the city and the insurance companies, but people ignore it all the same. The cars are all self-driving, but the insurance company still keeps beaters on hand to fob off on high-risk cops who managed to sink their last model in a fricking lake (!!!) People are still people. New tech lets them be people in new and interesting ways. But their human needs and misdeeds haven’t changed. That touch of tawdry grit made this world wonderfully rough around the edges and as endearing as your favorite, worn-out sweatshirt. You love it partly because it’s been through the mill. It’s familiar. It’s yours. And so is this world.
It ain’t easy to live in the Big Easy, and according to Brian Parker, it ain’t getting any easier in the future. Parker has created a delightfully tangible world.
The Crowd
Characterization
The setup for this story is classic neo-noir, but it’s the characters that sell it. Zach is a lovable, flatfooted sweetheart . The reader for his character in the audiobook version sells the story perfectly: when he reads a character rolling out of bed, he absolutely sells the exhaustion and discombobulation. The performance made a well written story an absolute treat to listen to.
Zach Forrest is everything you want in an neo-noir cop. Bluff, kind of sweet, kind of clueless around the ladies. Erring on the side of gallant unless you throw a punch. And tired. So. Very. Damn. Tired.
Zach’s friends and enemies are all well-rounded and engaging, all the way from his oily sometimes-informant who goes by a name that includes Voodoo–never a good sign–to the other cops who give him shit down at the station and Andi, his adorkably clueless and sweetly competent AI who may just have a computer-crush on him. She’s a great replacement for the peppy secretary of old-world noir.
Zach’s friends give a strong sense of reality to his life, grounding it in routine and webs of interpersonal relations that are totally believable. And the people he deals with at work are humans with completely human motivations, in all their shop-soiled glory.
The Lingo
Writing Style
Witty, wry and wearily affable, Zach’s voice allows Parker to set the tone and get in plenty of commentary that keeps readers engaged and smiling. It’s a clever, dryly playful style that works beautifully. You feel like you’re sitting with that one globe-trotting uncle hearing a good yarn, probably with your mom leaning disapprovingly through the door to give her big brother A Look because he’s being A Bad Influence. The style hits right in the nostalgic sweet spot
The Moves
Plot
A classic whodunnit-romp in the noir mold, the series’ plots move in all the ways you expect. The tired charm of noir has been updated with pleasure-bots, clones, and powerful tech, which opens up all kinds of new avenues for a good old-fashioned cop to get into trouble. The subversions and reworkings of classic tropes are tons of fun to watch. For fans of mystery and whodunnits, these aren’t the most devilishly difficult plots to figure out, but I have a soft spot for stories that let me strap in and enjoy the ride, and Parker’s work hits that spot perfectly.
Overall Rating
The next time the rain’s coming down, pour a bourbon and grab this series. You’ll be glad you did.