I grew up on detective stories with the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Joe Friday, Agatha Christie, Jessica Fletcher, and Beckett & Castle. I’ve found that I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery no matter the medium; book, film or TV. As my friends can attest, when a story telegraphs too much to the audience, I figure out the killer and the scenario behind the deed very early on, but I still love the challenge of figuring out the mystery. I devour mysteries like a plump man devours sweets. So when the chance came to read and review D.B. Grady’s first novel, Red Planet Noir, I not only jumped at the chance but I put my own hard earned cash down to buy it from the author himself at this past Austin Comic Con. The single greatest thing I can say about the detective drama is that for the first time, in a long time, the story is so beautifully crafted and takes the reader down so many rabbit holes as it does the characters that I didn’t figure out who the killer was till the protagonist did. In that revealing line I knew what had happened and in that realization I knew that I found a story that I would read again and persuade my friends to read as well.

First the pitch of the book from its product description: (Click the image below to purchase)

Winner of the 2010 Indie Book Award for Science Fiction.

Michael Sheppard was the best private eye in New Orleans, and then his wife left him. He finds solace in the bottle and his career in the toilet. Nights at the casino pay the bills, until they don’t, and leg breakers start knocking at the door, and knocking out his teeth.

When he’s hired by a bombshell heiress to check out a murder on Mars, it’s a chance for a new start. But as the case unfolds, he makes enemies of cops and gangsters alike in an investigation racing from stately mansions to smoke-filled speakeasies, from deserted ice colonies to mining towns on the asteroid belt.

All he wanted was a paycheck to clear some gambling debt. Now Michael is the key figure in a murder conspiracy that’s left a vacuum in the halls of power, with the labor union, mob and military vying for control of Mars.

RED PLANET NOIR is for science fiction and hardboiled mystery fans alike. Living on Mars can be murder.

From the first page of this brilliant 210 page piece of art disguised as a sci-fi dime store detective novel, I was hooked.  I cracked this open just this morning, upon waking up from a late night, and could not put it down beside for my duties that I had to perform thought the day, and just finished it a few minutes before starting this review. Though this story is set in a somewhat distant future, it is not the beautiful and innocent future of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Star Trek. It’s a more than plausible look into a future full of the same greed, betrayal, and lust that permeates our own times. All this wrapped in a Noir dress, one with a glorious slit down the middle that shows each shapely leg as she walks onto the stage.

Even though this book mostly takes place on another world, Mars, it’s written so well that you forget that the information laden cabbies are androids (who get their info from ATMs and toilets in train station ladies rooms) and some of the guns are plasma pistols and surrender yourself to the same world of any Noir detective novel. The fact that it happens to be in a sci-fi realm doesn’t take away from that.  The beatings that are suffered by the protagonist, Mike Sheppard, and others through the story are described in such glorious detail that it seems that it could only come from the prose of someone with vast tombs of knowledge on the subject. The characters and the events are just everything I needed for a classic Noir story that I’ve been waiting years to read.

My only negative about the book is that of it being in the sci-fi genre may preclude some readers from ever opening it up and taking a chance on what I hope to be just the first in a long line of novels about private eye Michael Sheppard.  I hunger for more novels from D. B. Grady and hope you will too when you finish this book.

If you love grimy Noir themed detective novels this is a must read for you, but just remember “Living on Mars can be murder…”  Visiting Mars can be just as deadly.