Book review- NEON NIGHTS: A CYBERPUNK DETECTIVE THRILLER by Anna Mocikat
NEON NIGHTS: A CYBERPUNK DETECTIVE THRILLER by Anna Mocikat is a spin-off of her popular BEHIND BLUE EYES (link:https://www.epicindie.net/bookreviews/book-review-behind-blue-eyes-by-anna-mocikat) novel series. You don't have to be familiar with the Behind Blue Eyes series to enjoy Neon Nights, though, and it's arguably a decent introduction to not only the Behind Blue Eyes universe but cyberpunk as a whole. It's a pretty standard police procedural with the main twist being that it's set in a dystopian high-tech future.
The premise is a Brazilian cop, Siro, is transferred to Olympias I (North America) after they start having some serious issues with cybernetics thieves. Someone has been kidnapping citizens and stealing their implants before leaving their bodies in a landfill. The exact number of people killed is uncertain but could have gone on forever if not for the fact a television star has ended up as one of the victims, finally drawing police attention to the case.
Siro's partner, Kate, is a tough hard-nosed detective that would normally be the guy in a mixed male-female pair on a cop show. She's been working in Oldtown for years and it's worn away most of her idealism, leaving only hardened cynicism that Siro does his best to chip at. It's a classic team up and there's a good amount of sexual tension that gets resolved in a surprisingly realistic as well as unusual way.
The story pretty much follows your typical police thriller lines with a few zigs and zags. Siro and Kate follow down leads, interview suspects, and find increasing amounts of pressure to wrap their case up when it starts to implicate people of power. We also get a femme fatale, untrustworthy witnesses, and hints that the crime they're investigating is just the tip of the iceberg to something much-much bigger. This isn't a criticism of the book as the merging of film noir and cop tropes with cyberpunk has a large history ranging from Robocop to Ghost in the Shell.
The book is hardcore R-rated and contains copious amounts of both sex as well as violence. This isn't something that bothers me but may be something that puts off readers who don't want to know about the kinky seedy underworld of a cyberpunk future. I personally prefer cyberpunk with a bit of edge to it and this has a nice Seven meets Altered Carbon feel. Plus, I think the sex is used as part of the world-building and characterization rather than just gratuitous. There's a lot of it, though.
Neon Nights is an entertaining story from beginning to end and if you like cop procedurals and cyberpunk, then you’ll probably like this. Siro and Kate are both likable characters and the story is a self-contained one that has plenty of room to be expanded on later.
