A young woman asks Miles Flint to find her Disappeared mother and "sister".

This novella was less gripping than the full-length novels and I also found the world-building less engrossing. ( )

Rusch, Kristine Kathryn. The Retrieval Artist. Analog, 2000. Retrieval Artist No. 0.1. WMG, 2012.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a prolific multi-genre writer. She is probably best known for her many novelizations in the Star Trek universe. I am particularly fond of her stories about deep space salvage that began with Diving the Wreck. The Retrieval Artist is the Hugo-nominated novella that kicked off the now 15-book series of the same name. It falls chronologically somewhere in the middle of the series, but it does a good job of establishing the parameters of the Retrieval Artist universe. Set in Armstrong, the largest city on the Moon, the story centers on the ethics of multispecies commerce. To survive, sentient races have adopted a strict when-in-Rome approach to dealing with each other. When on someone else’s turf, you follow their rules, and ignorance of the local law is no excuse. Add in typical corporate and individual greed and venality, and conflict is inevitable. The draconian nature of off-planet laws has led to a quasi-legal industry in which wealthy violators of exo-species laws pay to have themselves disappear. Some of these services then market their former clients back to the aliens who want to punish them. Our hero, Miles Flint, is an ex-cop who searches for those who have disappeared and are now in danger. Rusch’s world-building is superb. Her characters are satisfyingly noir, and the plot is twisty enough to keep one engaged. A worthy Hugo nominee. ( )

My husband is reading this series and so I am rereading some of the early books with him. I'm not sure if I actually read this novella before or not. I assume this was the first Miles Flint story? I honestly don't remember. I like this story short but kind of typical Miles Flint style. ( )

"The short novel that started the entire Retrieval Artist series".

"One of the top ten science fiction detective series ever."

High praise indeed.

Tech Noir: Once more into the breach!

This short story starts out in the crummy office a private detective who is shortly visited by an attractive femme fatale and - Oh Dear God, I'm back in noir hell!!

This is why terms like derivative and unimaginative are used by reviewers.

Our private detective narrator explains that this is for appearances only, however. He's actually fabulously rich beyond all his wildest dreams and tells us in pretty much the same language. Then, for no apparent reason I can fathom, proceeds to treat his client with the utmost disrespect and arrogance. The author aims for the wise cracking,hard-boiled, surly bitter-vet Private eye but misses, leaving us with little more than a complete jerk of a main character who barges through women. He's not roguish, he's a ****.

I'm not sure of the total word or page count of this short story (I have it on Kindle), but I was two-thirds through this story and nothing had actually happened yet. There'd been a meeting with the client, some research which involved sitting at a booth in a bar reading old newspaper articles, and then another meeting with the client. This guy is quite fond of telling his how good he is, yet so far, he's done nothing but sit on his arse.

It's almost like the author realised this too and threw this into the story: "My work is nine-tenths research and one-tenth excitement. Most of the research comes in the beginning, and it's dry to most people, although I still find the research fascinating."

So what happens is the world's self-confessed Retriever completely glosses over how he manages to track down his three main suspects from thousands of candidates and then take off to interview them.

Okay.

Now, this story is set in the future, on the moon in a galaxy of other strange alien races. This isn't really developed, and I thought the story was of sufficient length that it it should have been elaborated on more. The setting came off as feeling very shallow and thin on the ground to me. Instead, we get a complete jerk who reads the newspaper for research.

The other issues that irked me was the old show, don't tell. There's a lot of the Narrator telling us and very little showing us. This combined with his attitude made it completely impossible to be emotionally or mentally engaged with the story. Comparisons to CSI are apt - the story just slides by without ever requiring you think.

I can only assume that the author developed a more assured writing style and improved her craft since this short story first appeared in Analog SF in June 2000. Either that, or in a world were the highest rating TV shows are all based around amateurs doing amateurish attempts at highly-skilled professions, editorial standards have likewise dipped. It's not like hack authors make international best-selling stories is it? *couch*Tim Butcher*cough*

It pains me to think the best Tech Noir detective story I've read is still a Shadowrun novel *shiver*. If i was a braver soul, I'd give the author the benefit of the doubt and check out one of her more refined, polished pieces. That would, perhaps, be more fair.




( )

Short piece that shows what the future has waiting for the retrieval artist. ( )