Midnight, Water City by Chris McKinney

 

One of my current thoughts about genre fiction is that there are setting genres and story genres; SF is a setting genre and Mystery is a story one. This is a Mystery (specifically, something like Noir) story in an SF setting--a bit more than a century in the future, but Earthbound, after various Things have happened. The story as a whole does what a Noir story is supposed to do, it's a fun ride, the setting and some of the Maguffin-ish aspects don't seem to have gotten as much thought, or at least don't seem to comport with my understanding of how the world works, how science works; and there are some things that plausibly looked like The Future but weren't that stick out like proverbial sticky-out bits. Clearly set somewhere near Hawai'i (which from the blurb in the jacket is McKinney's home) and clearly catches some of the political subtext of classic Noir and makes it text. Very worth the read, despite the few nits.