The Demolished Man

So my big thing about detective novels is that I love the gathering of evidence, the grand reveal and generally there being some sense of mystery to the events. This novel does away with all that and simply follows the murderer. Which cut a lot of the pleasure for me.

Ostensibly this story is set in the future however it was largely irrelevant to the plot. This novel could just has easily be set now, or even when it was written and you could still make everything except the esp stuff work. Furthermore a lot of the technology simply wasn't explored, there were smart computers, however they didn't seem to be used by the characters beyond a couple of moments, interplanetary space travel, and out of phase safes, but they really didn't come into play. Seems like a bit of a waste.

The other thing that lost a star for me was the society. Much like the technology, despite some basic trappings it is firmly stuck in the year the novel was written. Women were all 2 dimensional and had no substance to the, society looks like a mad men episode, and given we are supposed to be an interplanetary system there is traditions beyond what feels like American 70s.

I would say that I can see how this was an influential novel, but times have moved on, and other than a historical exercise I wouldn't recommend this book.

I have a feeling that when this book first came out it was original. But now over 50 years later, it was predictable and everything in the book is now SF cliche. It was obvious from the first page that the Man With No Face would turn out to be Ben Reich.

I hated the Powell/Barbara relationship, especially since I found it also a little creepy. She regresses to a child and he raises her as his daughter then by the end of the book they are in love and getting married. There's a definite Electra complex there.

I also hated the Reich character and half the book was his perspective. Throughout the book other characters would refer to him positively, but I didn't buy it. The guy was a dick. A ruthless, corporate CEO with no morals. I didn't see one likeable aspect to him and wanted him to fail from the beginning. Maybe that was the point, but the cat and mouse aspect of the story would have been more interesting had I wanted to root for him even a little bit.

Now Powell was a decent guy. Knowledgeable and experienced, with a no nonsense attitude. His side of the story was fun to read. I could see Tommy Lee Jones to be cast to play him if this book ever became a movie, and in fact that was what I was picturing most of the time in my head.