COLIGO

In Hannon’s debut SF novel, set in a future city where androids and humans coexist, an idealist’s political campaign is complicated by a serial killer, a paradigm-changing medical breakthrough, and time travel.

The City is a future metropolis that’s still healing 47 years after the Resurgence, a conflict between humans and the humanoid robots they created. Now, androids have legal rights and live among people as equals. A cabal of human dynasties dominate this society, and Colin O’Connor, the incumbent second-generation governor, is a respected leader running for reelection amid a heady milieu of medical advances and positive developments in human-android relations. But Colin harbors terrible family secrets that lead to a near-fatal knife attack on his colleague and clandestine girlfriend,scientist Julie Walsh. Julie survives, however, due to the machinations of Mick Taylor, a maverick scientist who discovered a method of time travel using tech that draws on the exotic chemistry of human blood. Mick’s been crisscrossing the decades after the Resurgence, tracing clues connected to periodic, vicious murders of well-connected local women. Homicide in the City is rare in the present day, but evidence surrounding the crimes points ominously toward a potential serial killer—and the O’Connors. Hannon plays clever mind games with readers regarding the nature of a sinister antagonist known only as “It,” and the storyline features time hops back and forth through the years, tangling the chronology and characters’ evolution. Fortunately, readers won’t find this as maddening as it could have been, because at the story’s midpoint, the surfacing of Mick’s journals provides a linear recap of the story so far, and a handy chart in the front of the book makes things even plainer. The plot does take its time to get where it’s going, but by the conclusion, there’s enough human-android intrigue to make a planned sequel worthwhile.

A provocative, complicated tale twisted into a knotty framework of time paradoxes.