Dark Noir is like Arthur C Clarke’s third law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) applied to crime fiction in that if you take a police procedural story and push it far enough into the future then it looks like something else (SF).

The main character is a police officer in a far future Pittsburgh that looks a bit like Judge Dredd and is fighting all sorts of criminal miscreants that are right out of a creature feature episode of X-Files or a HR Giger painting.

The structure of the book is really cool too. Each issue is broken down in to four individual tales. Some of the tales are part of a continuing storyline and others are standalones. Not only does this structure pack a lot of story into each issue but it also contributes to really fleshing out this far future east coast city.

The setting is particularly interesting because of it’s extrapolation of an east coast, dying, rust belt city. Though it evokes in the reader a SF feel it doesn’t take much for us to say that yeah, it COULD be Pittsburgh.

Part police procedural, part SF, part horror, part noir atmospherics and all awesome wow, what an unexpected and crazy good book. While I may have only read the second issue I hope to soon read the others.