Stacy Bender

Quirky Supporting Characters in an Entertaining Mystery/Sci-Fi/Pulp Noir Blend

Man on the Stair is part mystery and part sci-fi. What first appears a simple traffic accident turns out to be part of a murder spree by a serial killer, producing the mystery element of the story. Who is he/she? It is not, however, a whodunit with multiple, possible suspects or several red herrings. Rather, it is more of a slow reveal through the investigative efforts of our main characters – Adam, ex-police officer and now, ghost to the digital world; Lila, a driven and highly capable police detective; and Michal, a high schooler with considerable computer skills. The sci-fi element comes in through the near-future setting. Self-driving cars have been perfected and some jobs have been automated with holographic figures, for example. And apparently, automation is highly interconnected, as something like facial recognition identifies Adam on a phone camera and erases him even before the video can be replayed. That’s a lot more interconnected than your phone ‘talking’ to your thermostat.

There is also a pulp noir feel to the story. Claiming little but “military training”, Adam is our gritty hero who holds three, warring street gangs at bay in a seedy, run-down urban area. His digital invisibility could nudge him more toward super-hero, except his ghost status seems more a hindrance than a help. He has to follow people through doors, since the technology that controls them can’t see him. The supporting cast to our three main characters tends toward quirky, if somewhat stereotypic. Taggard, for example, is the police computer technician who believes that every room is bugged and that aliens are coming to get him (and probably just about any other conspiracy theory you can imagine). He’s good for several laughs over the course of the story.

My reservation about the book is minor and hinges on the inconsistent advance of technology. Some of the tech is quite revolutionary, e.g., using gene editing to mix human and animal DNA to create futuristic, police working dogs. Quite the feat! And yet, people are still using tablets to send texts and emails and pulling out their phones to take video. Computer security is another example. Both the villain and our police computer technician seemed to find system vulnerabilities quite frequently, as does Michal, the untrained, high school student. Either we have three, computer savants in the story or software security took a giant step backwards. But this issue hardly makes an impression in the midst of this light, fast, and often humorous story.

Overall, Man on the Stair is an entertaining blend of genre, populated by some gritty heroes with a quirky, supporting cast.

I was given a free copy of this book by the author. I elected to write this candid review.… (más)