Subject: Quick Look: Nocturne for a Dangerous Man, by Marc Matz

From: [email-masked] (P.D. TILLMAN)
Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:28:29 -0400

Quick Look: Nocturne for a Dangerous Man, Marc Matz
	Review Copyright 2000 Peter D. Tillman

Rating: "A-" -- a clever, intricate noir SF-thriller, and a very fine
first novel.

While Nocturne is unquestionably SF, Matz's "dangerous man" reminds me
more of classic noir detectives like Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer & John
D. MacDonald's Travis McGee. Stir in a dollop of Wire Paladin and you have
Gavilan Robie: a near-future P.I., now a specialist in the recovery of
stolen art, but a man with a darker history of dangerous 'recoveries'.
Between cases, or when tension mounts, he relaxes by playing his Guarneri
cello, a gift from a grateful client after a particularly hairy rescue.

Robie is asked to 'recover' Siv Matthiessin, who's been kidnapped by an
eco-terrorist group that is demanding an enormous ransom and an end to her
employer's Congo Basin construction project. Robie seems to offer her only
chance of surviving her ordeal, in a future that's grown warmer, darker,
meaner.

This is a book that worked really well while I was reading it, but won't
stand up to much post-reading poking-about. In particular, hero Robie is
just too omni-competent to be real. But superman power-fantasies are an
honorable SF tradition, and Nocturne is a fine and absorbing
entertainment. I'm looking forward to Matz's next.

Don't be put off by the lurid cover, which looks like a Baen reject and
has virtually nothing to do with the book. Gah.

Links:
Marc Matz's Web Page:  http://www.sfwa.org/members/Matz/

Also reviewed by Tom Easton (Analog 8/99, link expired, excerpt at Matz's
site) and Todd Richmond, SF Site: http://www.sfsite.com/07b/noc61.htm

%T Quick Look: Nocturne for a Dangerous Man
%A Marc Matz
%D April 2000
%I Tor Books
%O US$7
%P 480 pp
%G ISBN 0812575377

Read more of my reviews:
http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman