Red Planet Blues

A hard-boiled detective novel in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon — set on the planet Mars!

Robert J. Sawyer has won both the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award and the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award

Lomax is the name — Alex Lomax. I'm the one and only private detective working the mean streets of New Klondike, a rundown frontier colony on Mars. Years ago, two seedy adventurers — Simon Weingarten and Denny O'Reilly — discovered evidence of ancient Martian life. Treasure hunters swarmed here in "the Great Martian Fossil Rush," hoping to strike it rich selling specimens to uber-rich collectors back on Earth. Most went home empty-handed, but I'm a wanted man there; I have to stay on the Red Planet.

So I ply the gumshoe trade among failed prospectors, corrupt cops, and "transfers" — folks wealthy enough to upload their consciousness into near-immortal android bodies that don't leave behind DNA or fingerprints. All cases are cold cases on Mars, but a doozy just fell into my lap — and it might lead me to the fabled motherlode, Weingarten and O'Reilly's long-lost alpha deposit with its untold wealth in paleontological fossil gold. That is, if the others on the trail don't kill me first...
Maclean's bestseller!Globe and Mail bestseller!Locus bestseller!
"A tour de force. A fusion of the two genres in which the mystery depends on the SF elements." —Analog Science Fiction & Fact

"Imagine The Treasure of the Sierra Madre played out on Mars. Sawyer has, and the result is wonderful in both senses — a terrific noir crime novel that is full of the wonders of Sawyer's sci-fi world. In Red Planet Blues, Sawyer has imagined, and written, his best book yet." —Crime Writers of Canada Grand Master Eric Wright

"A rollicking read, at turns funny, exciting and full of twists and turns." —Daytona Beach News-Journal

"Sawyer's new book is more gripping than a pair of pliers." —SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak

"An excellent detective novel that just happens to take place on another planet. It's a genre mash-up that might have felt gimmicky in less capable hands; however, with Sawyer at the helm, it succeeds beautifully." —The Maine Edge

"Red Planet Blues: Take equal parts Raymond Chandler's noir detective novels, Robert Service's poetry of the Yukon gold rush, and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, shake it all up in Rob Sawyer's noggin and chill. Decant onto pulp paper, and knock the concoction back like cold Sarsaparilla in a dirty glass." —SFRevu

"The type of book codified by Isaac Asimov in The Caves of Steel. Sawyer plays absolutely on the up-and-up, providing enough information to make his resolution very satisfactory and suspenseful." —Locus
Incorporates the Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novella "Identity Theft," which won Europe's top science-fiction award, the €6,000 Premio UPC de Ciencia FicciónA Main Selection of The Science Fiction Book Club