While I wasn't thrilled with author Adam Christopher's book <em>Hang Wire</em>, I'm having a blast with his tongue-in-cheek mystery/detective series 'Ray Electromatic Mysteries.'

Raymond Electromatic is a robot. He's the last of his kind ... a programmed assassin created by the U.S. government. But the program is what got killed and Ray is the only survivor. He masquerades as a private detective, doing odd P.I. jobs in between assassinations. He's got a twenty-four hour memory tape limit, but he works with a room-sized computer named Ada who is connected to him wirelessly, often offering unwanted advice, and on occasion just a little bit pout-y (he can move around and she's stuck in the office).

In this novella, <em>Standard Hollywood Depravity</em>, Ray is hired to put a hit on Honey ... a go-go dancer in a Hollywood club. Ray's a robot and he doesn't have any feelings about this one way or the other, and he certainly shouldn't ever be questioning his directives, but when the club is filling up with gangsters serving different bosses from all around town, the hit becomes much harder and Ray can't help but wonder if Honey is truly the target.

Ray and Ada have a busy night, full of danger and intrigue.

Christopher does a really splendid job of capturing the noir mystery mood. The story feels like it's set in the 1950's but with a robot and wireless connectivity available. And the guest characters and setting (such as a Hollywood club, complete with coat-check station) keep us in the noir-mystery mode.

I don't always believe in the locations that Christopher describes, but there's just the right balance between the characters, the mystery, and the humor, with the characters driving the story (which I prefer) that I don't mind walking through a back alley or a visit to the Hollywood sign that doesn't quite feel right.

This series is proving to be a lot of fun and I look forward to the next adventure (already on my Kindle).

Looking for a good book? Mix a little sci-fi, with some hard-boiled noir mystery, add a jigger of fun and you get Adam Christopher's <em>Standard Hollywood Depravity</em>.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Christopher's style and wit is always fun. Great addition to the series.

"This seemed to be my lucky night for going undercover, which was something I rarely did on account of the fact that I was not only a robot but the last robot, which tended to make me stick out in a crowd just somewhat."
"Robot noir"? Just those words and I'm already a fan. Raymond (get it?) is the last robot in Hollywood. Intended to replace the human police, general robophobia left Raymond a lone and lonely robot, his only friend the profit-obsessed supercomputer Ada, these day he makes his money as a hitman (hitrobot?). Raymond's newest job is a dancer at a club--doesn't matter who or why she is wanted dead, just that someone is willing to pay for it. But when Raymond finds himself within a web of instincts, his detective instincts take over.

Christopher's noir pastiche is pretty perfect. Femme fatales and fast-talking gangsters abound. Fast-talking gangsters abound, and there's the standard noir sexism and proliferation of femme fatales, despite a near-but-not-quite-successful subversion of the trope. But what was most important to me was that he has the patter down perfectly. It's hilarious. Some of my favourites:
"I thought it all went rather well against my chassis , which was bronzed and the color of those sculptures by that guy who did sculptures in bronze."
"Being a hit man— hit robot—is an interesting business. It requires a certain level of what I like to call not being caught. There were ways to avoid that particular outcome and I liked to think I was pretty good at a few of them. I had several advantages in my favor. I didn’t leave fingerprints, for a start."
Despite the comedy and all of the noir spoofiness, there are also some really interesting elements I'd love to see Christopher expand upon. Raymond has been reprogrammed--by Ada-- to be a hitman. As he puts it:
"A little adjustment and I was invited to the party. Which was also fine. Because I was programmed to think it was fine."
His personal memory is constrained to a short tape reel that is overwritten when he returns to Ada, which reminded me a bit of Person of Interest. And how did Ada become the ultimate evil scheming femme fatale in the first place? I'd love to better understand her background and how she interacts with her clients.

Overall, it's a great little novella, and I'm looking forward to another adventure with Raymond the Robot. The plotting is tight, the story moves fast, and the ending manages to be both somewhat ambiguous and, to me at least, entirely unexpected, which was fun. If you're looking for a short punch of scifi noir, Standard Hollywood Depravity is well worth a look.

Standard Hollywood Depravity is fine. It's got a great cover and a potentially fun-sounding premise. It's highly readable and well-plotted with some inklings of interesting ideas that keep it from being pure mindless pulp. Unfortunately, the potential fun never fully materializes, and the inklings never develop into full-blown meaningful concepts. It's a too-slight story with a "twist" that's not anywhere near compelling enough to truly elevate it to being special.

It is a standalone novella, which is nice. I was concerned that I may not "get" it without having read any other part of the series it's part of, but that wasn't the case. It's plenty self-contained enough to judge on its own merits, and I could see it serving as a great first taste of the series if it's the sort of thing one is into. I'm just not. Unless Adam Christopher decides to write something from Ada's POV, in which case I am all in.

Just like Made to Kill and Brisk Money, this is an entertaining story -- imagine Chandler's noir detectives, that kind of world, but add in one robot detective-become-assassin and his profit-orientated handler (actually a computer). It's full of references and hat-tips to Chandler's era, and though it doesn't have Chandler's flair with words (few people do), it's well written and goes down easy. It's also reasonably clear of sexism, racism, and Chandler's other such vices.

This story in particular involves Raymond getting tangled up in the antics of various criminal cartels, and all that sort of thing implies. Bullets and assumptions fly, garnering a possibility of some grudges being held against Raymond and Ada, his handler -- and we end the story with Ada and Raymond in a pretty good position. All ready for the next novel, since this is marked as 1.5 in the series on Goodreads?

In any case, this is readable whether or not you've read Made to Kill and the short story Brisk Money, but it is worth reading those for extra background and a better understanding of Raymond, his capabilities, and his limitations. The ARC version I read bundled in Brisk Money, so you could comfortable skip to that and read it first before going back to read Standard Hollywood Depravity.

{Review link live from 9th March 2017.]