A Man of Shadows

Imagine a city where one part experiences perpetual sunlight and another perpetual darkness. Imagine that the people there treat time differently, as something to be cultivated and tamed, to the point where businesses, organizations, and individuals can have their own specialty timelines. There’s an art and a science to keeping oneself acclimated to all the various timestreams. But when Nyquist, a private eye hunting for a missing girl, stumbles upon a mystery tied to the nebulous middle ground between the sunlight and darkness, both he and his sanity are in danger.

A Man of Shadows is less psychedelic and weird than many of Noon’s other novels, but it’s no less innovative. He creates one intriguing variable — time itself — and unleashes it on an entire city, letting it run amok. And then he sets a classic noir scenario into motion and lets the world shape it into something wholly unexpected.

He also makes Nyquist into a fascinating figure, one you’re not sure you can trust as a narrator. His harried journey through the sunlight, darkness, and dusk adds genuine tension to the narrative, and Noon’s deft touch with other fantasy elements creates an unpredictable read from start to finish.