Requiem for a Good Machine is the first Song & Waterbird cyberpunk mystery by Daniel Claymore. Released 17th Aug 2022, it's 282 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats.

This is a cyberpunk noir SF cop procedural murder mystery set in the mean streets of future city Mirabilis. Officer Leo Song is, unusually, fully human and whose partner is a machine called Detective Waterbird. This future is one where the machines have taken (benevolent(ish)) control of everything and humans are more or less superfluous. A violent double homicide sees the pair trying to solve both the immediate murders and the underlying setup/frame for the murders before a human revolution is set in motion.

It's not derivative in any way, but stylistically it reminded me a lot of Philip K. Dick and Dashiell Hammett with a little William Gibson and Earl/Otto Binder in the mix for good measure. It's definitely exalted company, and it stands strongly on its own merits.

Four stars. Highly recommended for fans of hard SF mystery.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Requiem for a Good Machine is the novel with which Daniel Claymore makes his debut as a writer.
In a world where machines benignly dominate humanity, where machines decide what area each person should work in according to their aptitude and where the suicide rate is increasing more and more and technologically "enhanced" humans called sadboys are feared due to their outbursts of extreme violence, officer Leo Song tries to break through in a machine-dominated police force where the chances of a human being promoted to detective are nil.
A grotesque crime supposedly committed by a sadboy will give Officer Song the opportunity to prove his abilities, with the help of his superior, Detective Waterbird, a machine who inexplicably trusts his human partner and encourages him to try to climb the police hierarchy.
An excellent science fiction novel that will take the reader to a future not too difficult to imagine and leave him thinking "What if..." I hope to be able to read the next book in this series soon. An excellent debut!
I want to thank the authors, NYLA Publishing, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this story. The opinion I have expressed above is based solely on what I think of this book.

This is decent cyberpunk, not great. It's decent story, and I liked aspects of it. It just doesn't have the polish of a more experienced author. I hope Claymore keeps writing.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Requiem for a Good Machine is a great cyber punk setting adequately executed. I was hoping for a more unique mystery—this one didn’t quite hang together and there were some plot holes. I really liked the world building but unless you’re a huge cyberpunk fan I wouldn’t put this on top of your stack. The prose is merely workmanlike and the characters are a little two dimensional, and not just the robots suffered this fate. Ultimately--the execution limits the enjoyment one has of this book. Perhaps it should have been a novella rather than a full novel. it felt bloated and definitely lagged in places. An additional editing pass might have helped.