Peter F. Hamilton: The Nano Flower (1995)

Edition: Pan, 1995
Review number: 691

The third Greg Mandel novel is, like its predecessors, obviously flawed; unlike them, it is more a thriller than a mystery. It is set the better part of two decades later, when Greg and his wife Eleanor have teenage children, and Greg's friend and employer (billionaire industrialist Julia Evans) has a husband and children of her own. Had a husband, I should say, for he has gone missing before the start of the novel. The story begins when a flower is delivered to Julia along with a message from her husband; the flower, it turns out, is not from earth but contains alien genetic material. Julia asks Greg to track down her husband and find the source of the flower, which appears to be connected with rumours of an incredible new technology - also possibly of alien origin.

As a thriller, the plot amounts to a race between Greg and Julia on the one hand and unscrupulous unknown rivals on the other to gain control of this new technology. This would be fine, and has obviously been the basis of quite a large number of enjoyable thrillers. However, The Nano Flower has several flaws. The characterisation, particularly of Julia, is inconsistent. Greg's psychic powers are rather different from those he has in the earlier novels, with intuition emphasised rather than empathy. Most seriously, The Nano Flower has a poor beginning, the first fifty or so pages almost completely failing to grip the imagination even for a reader who has already read both Mindstar Rising and A Quantum Murder. Though it picks up in the middle, the ending is also something of a disappointment. The poorest in the series.

Peter F. Hamilton: Mindstar Rising (1993)

Edition: Pan, 1993
Review number: 664

Peter Hamilton's first novel introduces his psychic detective Greg Mandel (named of course, though rather oddly, after the monk who founded the science of genetics). It has a rich background, even though it is set only fifty years or so in the future. Global warming has changed the climate, and destroyed low lying country as the polar ice caps have melted. At the same time, an inept Socialist dictatorship has destroyed the British economy before being swept away in a revolution. Mandel was part of an experimental army corps (known as Mindstar) with a special gland which enhances latent telepathy. When this expensive unit was disbanded, he became part of the revolution, helping organise guerillas in Peterborough housing estates swamped by refugees from the flooding of the fens.

Now, he has become a private investigator, and is hired by the big success story of the new Britain, the electronics company Event Horizon, to investigate sabotage in their orbiting microchip factory. This turns out to be quite complicated, and Hamilton creates a story influenced by cyberpunk including computers, drugs, telepathy and a fair amount of violence. He occasionally uses somewhat dubious shortcuts. Mandel's friends include an incredibly talented computer hacker and a fellow psychic who can see the future. The latter saves time by telling Mandel that if he did go ahead and interview two hundred workers who might be connected to the sabotage, then he would find out nothing; this is extremely convenient.

This is a relatively minor quibble with an interesting and enjoyable novel, much better than its sequel, A Quantum Murder.

Peter F. Hamilton: A Quantum Murder (1994)

Edition: Pan, 1996
Review number: 656

Though slow in getting started, Hamilton's second science fiction mystery featuring psychic detective Greg Mandel turns into an interesting piece of detection. Like the others, it is set in a post-global warming, post-socialist dictatorship Britain, much of the novel taking place in an area fairly familiar to me, around Oakham and Peterborough. Seeing the familiar transformed as Hamilton has done here is quite strange; the idea that parts of Belfast might be centres of paramilitary activity is reasonably easy to accept today, but not that the same might become true of Peterborough housing estates.

The murder to be investigated takes place at Launde Abbey, a stately home now used as a centre for research in theoretical physics loosely attached to Cambridge University. Six or seven young students are given the opportunity to work with famous cosmologist Dr Edward Kitchener, and it is he who is murdered, during a night when a storm cuts the house off from the outside world.

It proves a strange case, for though Kitchener's research might make him a target for assassination by a rival industrial concern, it is hard to see how an outsider could get into the house (the only road is flooded and the storm prevented aircraft from reaching it), and a professional would be unlikely to mutilate the body in the way that Kitchener's corpse has been. The mutilation matches the modus operandi of a convicted serial killer, but he was safely in a criminal asylum on the night of the murder. The mutilation also makes the students in the house unlikely suspects, even though Kitchener caused tension be seducing all the young women he worked with.

The puzzle is rather unfair, in a way that science fiction mysteries are often accused of being. The solution relies on not yet invented technology, so new that it is not even known to the sleuth (which makes things a little more equal). It is extremely unlikely that any reader will think of the solution in advance, and I am not at all sure that Hamilton actually pulls all the loose ends tight at the end.

All in all, A Quantum Murder is a bit of a disappointment, too slow in parts and unconvincing as a mystery.