This is a weird one, and I like it for that. Most cyberpunk stories are about something grand -- a big, world-changing thing is happening and at the end we can be happy for our hero or sorry that it happened. Pretty much all the cyberpunk stories I've read so far involve nefarious plots or entities that will remake the world. It gets a little old.

This is not the case with Marid Audran. He's not important and while he does kinda solve a murder or two, it's not like it matters that much. Mostly, Marid brings you along in this strange Arabic ghetto where everyone is modded and body-shaped and drugged to oblivion (or dunk) and just trying to get by.

I spent some time living in Vancouver's Downtown East Side when it was something to live there (maybe it still is), and I got to know many people that, in a different life, could have appeared in Effinger's Budayeen, popping pills and clipping in moddys to reshape their entire personality in a moment. This story nails the seething energy of a poor, black market wrong side of the tracks and dresses it up in a very enjoyable cyberpunk finery.

I said all of this to myself while I shaved my throat, looking in the bathroom mirror. I was trying to persuade myself of something, but it took me a while to do it. When I did, I wasn't happy about my conclusion: I hadn't accomplished very much during the last several days; but three times now, people had dropped dead near me, people I knew, people I didn't know. If this trend went on, it could endanger Yasmin.

Hell, it could endanger me.

See, it's a whodunit, but the problem is that they keep doing it and it starts to make Marid a little nervous. He has no aspirations to save the world or do much of anything beyond inhabit the little slice of alley and biz he's carved out for himself. But the dead bodies start to impose on his placid nature.

And, of course, the story gets extra points for the Nero Wolfe references. Everything is better when it understands Nero Wolfe. Not that Marid does -- he's too blitzed.

I made a mental note to slow down my drug intake; crumbled the mental note; and tossed it into my mental wastebasket.

It's not a proper drug story like Junkie or Less Than Zero, drugs are just the backdrop, part of the atmosphere, really. But the sheer force with which everyone in the story is desperately flogging their body with chemicals, with circuitry, with software, reminds me a little of the mental life of the terminally online. There's no rest, nor none sought. Check it out if you want a low-key cyberpunk ride.