Where every side of the street is dark
‘The Night Market’ blends crime noir and sci-fi
Are you one of the many who have cleared their Netflix queue of good television crime drama? Still trying to scratch that sci-fi itch as you wait for “Westworld” to return?
Well, Jonathan Moore’s latest thriller, “The Night Market,” will satiate both desires and satisfy both itches immediately.
Ross Carver is an aging homicide detective in a futuristic San Francisco that embodies both crime noir sleaze and Silicon Valley.
Along with his longtime partner Jenner, he comes across a horrific scene where a fresh dead body is rapidly decomposing. After assessing the situation, Carver and Jenner are unexpectedly whisked away by hazmat-suited FBI agents, quarantined and poisoned.
Carver finds himself several days later waking up in his own bed with a woman reading to him whom he recognizes as his neighbor Mia from across the hall. He has very little memory of what happened the night he was taken away.
While the science fiction aspect becomes more prevalent at the end of the book, it isn’t the true pulse of “The Night Market.”
What you’re mostly getting from Mr. Moore is a graphic and gritty crime drama that has sci-fi thriller elements. It’s “Miami Vice” meets “The Matrix,” and George Orwell is hosting party.
What keeps “The Night Market” the chugging along are those Crockett and Tubbs moments between Carver and Jenner. Mr. Moore’s handling of the partnership exemplifies the chemistry that you’d expect from two battlescarred vets. The chapters that revolve around their relationship are ones that you won’t want to end.
Additionally, the reader is invested in every little moment of Carver’s detective work. Mr. Moore does such smooth work when describing Ross’ deductive mind that you buy that he’s been on the force as long as his five years from mandatory retirement indicates.
His self-confidence along with how he handles himself in every situation creates a protagonist one can easily get behind.
The incorporation of futuristic technology isn’t overly hokey. Cell phones, tablets and the internet are still at the heart of people’s distractions and play very much into the characters’ dilemmas.
You would expect a couple of older guys on the force like Carver and Jenner to complain how the times are a-changing, but in this world, technology has frighteningly taken hold.
Both Carver and Jenner are aware of its benefits and its faults, and Mr. Moore makes the reader aware of it, too.
In between the melding of sci-fi and crime noir, the glue that holds it all together is the engaging relationship between Carter and Mia. Their budding romance isn’t forced or mushy but is developed very organically throughout the book.
It never interferes with the looming mystery and helps to cultivate more questions.
However, the way those questions get answered may be where some readers take exception.
Mr. Moore does such a wonderful job setting the crime mystery tone throughout that when a sci-fi twist takes the lead in the final act of the book it’s a bit of a sucker punch that knocks the wind out of you.
Even though the last line quenches the expectations of the genres and the fans, how we get there is a bit jarring and convoluted, having you wondering if all your questions were, indeed, answered.
But then again, maybe that’s the point.