Easytown’s robotic pleasure clubs are a serial killer’s playground.
The futuristic slum in eastern New Orleans is a violent place where any vice can be satisfied—for a price. As long as the taxes are paid and tourists continue to flock to the city, businesses are allowed to operate as they see fit. But a string of violent murders threatens to upset the delicate balance between pleasure and … pleasure and safety.
As homicide Detective Zachary Forrest tries to unravel the mystery and prevent the next murder, he embarks on a mind-bending investigation that will change his perception of reality forever.
more
Zack is a Police Officer that is on the case and gets himself in some trouble. I love mysteries and this us a fantastic one that grabbed me from start to finish. I hope there is more in the future this series is a fantastic listen.
Shauna Joesten
The rain is coming down on the good ol’ New Orleans, and this rain is cold. It’s the kind of night for a long duster and a fedora, a night where the neon reflects from the puddles. And one tired cop walks the streets alone, on his way to a murder scene.
That poor schmuck of a homicide detective is Zach Forrest, and he’s everything you want in an neo-noir cop. Bluff, kind of sweet, kind of clueless around the ladies. Erring on the side of gallant unless you throw a punch. And tired. So. Very. Damn. Tired.
This is one of the few neo-noir cyberpunks that feels just as real as everyday life. The tech is futuristic, but it’s neither terrifyingly and malignantly powerful nor is it humanity’s salvation. It still fritzes and glitches. AI has gotten just smart enough to talk to us, but not smart enough to realize that saying ‘he’s unavailable due to being in jail on suspicion of murder’ is really unhelpful. Your toilet can analyze your urine and hearing its health advice every morning is mandated by the city and the insurance companies, but people ignore it all the same. The cars are all self-driving, but the insurance company still keeps beaters to hand to fob off on high-risk cops who managed to sink their last model in a fricking lake (!!) People are still people. New tech lets them be people in new and interesting ways. But their human needs and misdeeds haven’t changed. That touch of tawdry grit made this world wonderfully rough around the edges and as endearing as your favorite, worn-out sweatshirt. You love it partly because it’s been through the mill. It’s familiar. It’s yours. And so is this world.
A great neo-noir treat that has me eager for the next installment. This is one to pick up, folks.
Bladerunner was one of my favorite movies growing up and it’s easy to see why. It’s a Noir Detective story which just so happens to take place in a proto-cyberpunk future. Replicants took the place of Blacks as an exploited underclass but they were actually in a state of full-on slavery again. Bladerunner’s hero, for lack of a better term, was the kind of man who existed to hunt them down and exterminate them when they went rogue. A few novels have managed to recapture that sort of world with PRIME SUSPECTS: A CLONE DETECTIVE MYSTERY by Jim Bernheimer and ALTERED CARBON by Richard K. Morgan being the two best off the top of my head.
The Immorality Clause is a more low-key version of the story with true Replicants not having yet actually emerged, just robots. There may be true A.I. in some of the more advanced models but most of them are merely life-like dolls which serve a variety of functions for men and women in the setting. Particularly sex because this is a Noir story. Homicide Detective Zach Forrest is invited down to Easytown, a kind of Storybrook-esque slum of New Orleans, to investigate a murder in one of the sexbot establishments there. This gets him involved in a strange and dangerous mystery which involves a serial killer and a political assassination on the eve of worldwide robotic legislation.
The book has a nice down-to-Earth feeling which I felt made it stronger. Zach is a Detective but even he can afford an A.I. to manage all of his affairs. New Orleans, already one of the more diverse cities in the world, now has a bunch of Arabic immigrants. The world-building is subtle rather than in your face and works better for its groundedness. It simultaneously manages to have a 1940s-esque feel in some places while also feeling like it could plausibly take place in the future.
Zach Forrest is a much nicer man than Bladerunner’s Decker but he’s still an individual who is deeply set in his ways and both repulsed as well as fascinated by the newest models of sexbots. Paxton is a character who exudes so much mystery the audience almost certainly thinks she’s a robot herself but may well be something more complicated. The serial killer, himself, is a figure which doesn’t get much in the way of development but shows himself to be clever but not quite as much as he thinks he is.
The supporting cast is also interesting as we get to see New Orleans citizens from all branches of life. I also felt like the book did a good job of stretching out the investigation. As opposed to it all happening in a couple of days, the story takes place over a couple of weeks and feels more realistic. There are times when leads dry up and they just have to wait for resultd which made things feel more authentic.
Finally, I give credit for how they handled the issue of A.I. It didn’t spontaneously develop but is something which the developers have very clearly designed within limitations. Machines never suddenly go “rogue.” They may malfunction but the majority of problems in the world with robots are because people programmed them to be problems–a nice change of pace from most science fiction.
In conclusion, this is an excellent work of science fiction. Brian Parker did a wonderful job of creating a seedy Noir future setting which invokes Bladerunner without copying it. I look forward to the sequel.
9.5/10
I listened to the audiobook version of this book.
Run time: 9hrs and 24 minutes, narrated by Daniel Penz
In Brian Parker’s The Immorality Clause(An Easytown Novel), we meet Officer Zachary Forrest, a homicide detective in the futuristic version of New Orleans called Easytown. Easytown is filled with sexbots, crime and vices galore.
Detective Forrest is called in to investigate a proverbial closed room Whodunnit? when a patron of one of the cities legal robot sex clubs is murdered. Everything in the club is recorded, except what happens inside the room, but the last person to be with the patron was one of the robots and her records show he was healthy when she left the room, so who slaughtered him and turned the room into a bloodbath?
This story combines sci-fi and crime noir in an entertaining and engaging manner.
I have to admit, this story was a winner in my mind as soon as I read it had sex bots, yep, I’m as easy as Easytown.
What did I like about this story?
I liked the way the futuristic technology was integral to the plot and worked with the traditional detective story elements. I also liked how there were mysteries inside of mysteries that kept getting revealed as the book went on. Overall, the story had the familiar types of elements that make these stories great fun to read, combined with new elements such as Detective Forrest’s AI companion, Andy.
What didn’t I like about this story?
I didn’t care for the fact that at times the detective seemed as dense as a deactivated robot when it came to picking up some of the things that were going on in the story. I found myself asking, “C’mon, how could he be that dense?” at a specific moment regarding someone who had a romantic interest in him. It turned out there were some extenuating circumstances that led to his confusion, but in the moment, it left me more aggravated then understanding.
Narration:
The narration was well done, though near the beginning there were a few spots the sound quality seemed to be off, but it stabilized as the book got deeper and was nothing more than a minor distraction.
Conclusion: (Aka: Would I listen to more by this author?)
All in all, I look forward to listening to the other books in this series. And while not available in audio, I’ve been enjoying reading the Easytown Anthology High Tech/Low Life made up of stories from other authors as well as Brian Parker.