Prime Suspects is an homage to Ridley Scott's Bladerunner without being a rip-off. The premise is Dave Bagini wakes up in a genetics lab, hating clones and remembering he's one of the universe's greatest detectives.
The problem is he's NOT Dave Bagini, or at least he's not the original. Dave is the forty-second clone of Dave Bagini. In the future, the best at any profession can have themselves cloned and live off the proceeds from taking a tithe from their offspring's salaries. In the three years from when the original Dave had his clone sample taken, he learned to get over his hatred of clones and learned to love money more.
Which sucks for Forty-Two.
Dave doesn't have much time to adjust to the fact he's the latest in a small army of clones before he's sent to solve his first murder. Someone has killed Dave Prime, the original Dave so to speak, and all indications are that it was one of the previous forty-one models. Dave has to outwit himself as many times as it takes to solve a case which, literally, endangers them all. After all, if a clone line is defective, there's nothing to do but cancel it.
That is a premise.
The definition of high concept.
Clone Detective solves his own murder.
Congrats to Jim Bernheimer for coming up with.
There's nothing new about gritty Noir Detective stories set against a science-fiction backdrop. However, there's nothing new under the sun period and Prime Suspects manages to make a maximum use of its Chandler-meets-Dolly the Sheep premise.
It's a good example of speculative fiction, which is something I don't get to say very often. It takes the premise of cloning technology, examines how it would impact society, and then draws much of the story from how it had radically altered the lives of people in society.
We not only get the perspective of society on clones, which is to treat them as subhuman cheap labor, but also the perspective of how the clones feel about their situation. All clones are sterile from birth so they have nothing to spend their money on but self-indulgence. Clones also try to individualize themselves in ways both big and small. All of them are enslaved to their contracts, though, and every Dave is a police officer whether he wants to be or not. The fact all of them are genius detectives with some stuck behind desks or serving as patrolmen leave more than a few frustrated.
There's always more clones than opportunities.
Really, this is my favorite part of the book as we get plausible but wild changes in how society alters with such a set up. Forty-Two is unsettled, for example, by the fact one of his alternates is shacked up with a trio of female clones of the same model. The reverse being true for other clones of his. Also, that newborn clones often end up set up with clones from models the rest of them have gotten with because they "know" they get along. The clones all have a reverence for the Prime's wife and child, too, as if they're somehow all of their line's chief priority. Dave, due to having an earlier memory source than them, is less than convinced of this.
I liked everything about this book, which is something I don't often say about works. The mixture of Noir and science-fiction just gells for lack of a better term, though. The fact Jim Bernheimer remembers to establish something like the fact the colony smells vaguely like rotten eggs and it coats everything comes up just often enough to remain a persistent setting detail. It's a seamy universe, this colony, and we get insights into how all of it works. We even get an understanding why revolts or civil rights campaigns don't happen often.
But don't take my word for it, check it out yourself.
10/10