Made to Kill By Adam Christopher (Tor, 240 pages, $28.99)

The strange bond between noir and science fiction has never been thoroughly explained. What is it about trench coats and laser pistols that make them work so well together?

It’s a question raised again by Made to Kill, which returns us to the mean streets of Raymond Chandler with a fun story set in an alternate 1960s Los Angeles. In true noir fashion it begins with a beautiful and mysterious dame entering the office of private investigator and confidential hit man Ray Electromatic.

If Ray’s name makes you think of a vacuum cleaner, that’s not unintentional. He’s 6 feet 10 inches and one ton of bronzed steel: the last of a line of robots that temporarily took over America’s labour force in the mid-20th century before being decommissioned for political reasons.

Ray’s brain consists of whirring magnetic tapes that fill up after a day’s use and are then downloaded back at the office, where they are analyzed by his partner, the cigarette-voiced A/I Ada. Noir plots are notorious for their complexity and

Made to Kill doesn’t cheat on this score. Before long, Ray’s job involves the CIA, a cabal of A-list Hollywood actors, evil Russian spies, robot mummies and power beams that effect the transmigration of souls by way of radioactive cubes. It will take a computer to figure it out.