Alternatingly syrupy noir and coldly brutal thriller. Starts off boozy and quippy, out Hammetting Hammett at points, but the fun definitively stops in the last third. The tonal shift doesn’t feel out of place but it recontextualises the first half quite well within the evils and nihilism of fascism.

One major difference to almost all hard boiled novels is that the city itself is not a character as in other authors’ work (Chandler and Hammett particularly) - it is an enemy. The city is riven with betrayal and nothing is genuine.