This is masterful storytelling, blending detective noir with science fiction. Nick Harkaway's future world is dark and disturbing. A vivid portrait of our world as it slips ever further into a climate crisis but the plot is multi-layered and full of shocks and surprises.
I found the writing at its best when the detective noir elements are in the forefront - plenty of slick dialogue and clever one liners. Any fans of Raymond Chandler and his contemporary noir authors will find lots to savour here.
The characterisation is complex, particularly the various titans, but the 'baseline' humans are drawn with sympathetic skill.
Anyone looking for something a bit different that is innovative and original should definitely give this a try.

At the start this seemed like a fairly standard procedural. However, it quickly started to develop a rather odd, futuristic / sci-fi slant which I really didn't like. Not for me!

Sleeper Beach is the follow up to Nick Harkway’s science fiction noir with a social conscience book Titanium Noir. In the word of Titanium Noir, the wealthy have essentially become another species due to a drug called T7. This drug allows them to live longer but also increases their size making them literal Titans. Each dose of T7 makes the user young again and larger. For those who have not read Titanium Noir, there will necessarily be a couple of spoilers in this review. Lovers of good detective/science fiction mash ups who should start there.
Hard bitten, cynical detective Cal Sounder is now a Titan. Having saved the life of his lover Athena he has been saved in turn and is no longer a “baseline human”, but Cal still hangs onto to his profession as private investigator. When Sleeper Beach opens, Cal has come to the rundown industrial seaside town of Shearwater to investigate a murder. Cal has been hired by one of the oldest, wealthiest Titans, Martha Erskine, whose family essentially owns Shearwater and the factory on its outskirts. Being Cal, it is not long before he has turned over some rocks, pissed a bunch of people off and found that there is, of course, much more to this murder than first appeared. This includes multiple connections to an infamous massacre from twenty years earlier and a possible workers’ revolution.
Cal Sounder is a down-the-line classic noir detective. Interestingly, being a new Titan gives him some additional armour (he can take a bit more punishment) but also some blind spots. But he is still a dirty fighter, snarky, cynical and poetically observant such as:
It’s early morning, cool air lapping at the land, the sun low in the east. If I look up and down the strand, I can see the twilight still hanging around like last night’s partygoers, too full to call it a night.
Or this about the faded glory of Shearwater:
If this place was still what it was there’d be a steeper class of idlers, cozeners and thieves, wearing their best clothes and talking in loud voices about the party at Erskine Hill – the wine, the dancing, the scandal… Instead… there’s just down-and-outs and fishermen, not always easy to pick apart because to be honest there’s a sliding scale now… Most of the fishermen have no boat to go to, because even the fish don’t come here anymore.
Sounder also has a bit of a (slightly tarnished) heart of gold so is constantly chafing against the privileges that being a Titan has given him over others and trying to do the right thing.
Harkaway uses the noir detective tropes and a classic hard-boiled narrator to explore and expose his world and in doing so, our own. Because Sleeper Beach is (like much of the noir tradition) an intensely political novel – using the metaphor of the Titans to dig into issues around the wealth and power disparities that drive the Western world. But more than that, even the title alludes to a beach in what used to be a holiday destination where people who have given up hope come to essentially fade away.
While he has the framework and ideas of Titanium Noir to build on Harkaway still has to occasionally fall back on slabs of exposition to underpin his scenario. As a result, Sleeper Beach feels a bit longer than it needs to be, and not quite as tight as a noir novel should be. But overall, in Sleeper Beach Harkaway once again effectively captures the cadences and beats of noir detective fiction and delivers a unique dark and politically aware vision.

It is a while since I have read a noir novel and I loved the atmosphere and the full descriptive prose from the author but I was always thinking that things were moving too slowly. Then I was thinking are all noir books like this but I do not think that they are.
I liked Cal Sounder , the private eye set in the old school of American style hard nosed P.I.s. He is trying to solve the case of a murdered girl in a small seaside town set in the not too distant future. The main use of the setting in the future is the group of humans known as the Titans who live longer and get much bigger than ordinary humans. Quite a lot of pontificating takes place about the deficits of such long life , wealth and power and how the Titans should best try and cope.
I liked the plot but if had had just moved a bit faster. I felt nothing much would happen till right before the end and this proved to be the case , albeit with a nice final twist. An interesting book that I am glad I read .
However I expected the sleepers on Sleeper Beach to have played a bigger role in the book. They felt like a riddle that has been left for another book to investigate.
Thanks to NetGalley andLittle, Brown Book Group UK for the ARC

I didn't read the author's first book but when I saw the summary of Sleeper Beach it sounded so intriguing, a detective who is also a Titan. Only problem is there was no back information given as to how he became a Titan and how this world works. It made for a frustrating read and just a few paragraphs explaining how this world worked would have helped get into the book. Surely it would also have been a good refresher for anyone who read the first book and just needed to catch up too? The mystery itself was interesting but overshadowed by the main character's incessant wisecracking which after a while started to annoy.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

Sleeper Beach has a great premise and the world of the story is interesting. I liked the way investigator Cal Sounder, as a Titan, is alienated from those around him. His apparent privilege is actually a burden.

However, I thought the story moved too slowly, with far too much description at the beginning (and I like down-at-heel seaside towns!). Some of the writing is also awkward at the sentence level, so I had to go back two or three times to make sense of it.

Still, an interesting crossover between a PI mystery and a speculative novel.

This is Nick Harkaway's second novel featuring detective Cal Sounder, following on from 'Titanium Noir'. The novels blend a classic 'film noir' atmosphere, with a futuristic setting where a small elite of the super rich are able to reset their youth using a drug called T7. The side effect of this eternal youth is increased size, hence these large, old and super strong humans are known as 'titans'. It's worth explaining this here, as Harkaway makes no concessions at all to readers who haven't read the first book, or to those like me who don't remember every detail. I'd certainly recommend reading 'Titanium Noir' before this one. In this novel, Sounder is now a titan himself after being given the drug to save his life, and five years have passed since the last book. He's arrived in a washed up seaside town to investigate the murder of a young woman whose body has been found on the beach, near a colony of ultra-depressed people (the 'sleepers' of the title) who sit out on the beach waiting to die.

So not cheery stuff. But Sounder's humanity and urge to do something good despite the bleak world he lives in prevent it being too depressing. Harkaway captures the mood of film noir perfectly, but despite it apparently being in the future, there isn't much evidence of other high tech development. If anything, it feels a bit less modern than the present time. People have phones but they don't seem to use them a lot. There's one point where Cal is bored and observes there is nothing to do in town, at which point most people with access to modern technology would turn to that (or in fact, most people would have been using that as a default). The teens hang around on the beach, rather than online. This may be part of making the 'noir' setting, usually associated with mid 20th century, work. It isn't a criticism exactly, it just makes an odd setting and perhaps that's the point - creating a subliminal dissonance that leaves the reader with a sense of unease.

At its heart, it's a good old murder mystery. There are various suspects, and plenty of secrets and skulduggery to uncover and unpick. It's quite compelling, particularly towards the end. Sounder is a reasonably sympathetic character whilst still being the 'hard boiled' detective type. Like all Harkaway novels, it's certainly original despite the traditional whodunnit core, and it's a book that makes you think. I did find it slow at times - it got on my nerves that Sounder is unable to have a conversation without pages of wise cracking and subtext, which gets dull after a while to the extent I would lose the thread and then miss some important detail. No one goes through life having every dialogue a complex interplay of double meanings and sass - most interactions are mundane. Thank goodness - it would be exhausting if life were like this book.

If you like murder mysteries and want something a bit different that nevertheless is still a proper 'whodunnit', this is a great choice. It's not 'cosy crime', but it's not gory or horrible either. Harkaway has no need to be gratuitous to create a creepy, dark atmosphere. But do read the first book first, or a lot of it will be lost on you.

This follow up to Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway is a extremely complex thriller with a style that breathes Raymond Chand!er.
It has a a somewhat political plot and it does take its time to really open up.

The alternative universe of the Titans, drug induced hulking humans who grow younger with each dose, adds layers of complexity to an already slightly confused plot,


But this a very well written novel that is very intelligent and thought-provoking. A read that demands attention.

**First book spoiler warning**

This is Nick Harkaway's second book in the Titanium Noir series, so while there are no spoilers here for Sleeper Beach, it does reveal at least one significant event that took place in the first book.

**

Cal Sounder, in his capacity as a Private Investigator rather than as part of the important Tonfamecasca family, is called in to look into the death of a woman on Sleeper Beach in the costal town of Shearwater. A formerly thriving town, it's now something of a backwater, but still the centre of operations for the Erskine family who practically own the town. It's not uncommon to find dead bodies on Sleeper Beach. People often come there to lie on one of the many sunbeds laid out and stay there; those suffering from what the local police pathologist calls 'spontaneous dysphoric and psychogenic cognitive atrophy', a fancy way of saying that they feeling discarded by the world and have given up on life. The dead woman Alisa Lloyd doesn't seem the type, and then there is the fact that she drowned. Or was drowned.

**Second spoiler warning for Titanium Noir Book 1. Read that book or review first. There are no spoilers below for Sleeper Beach**

Sleeper Beach and the Titanium Noir series takes place in a futuristic SF world where, Blade Runner like, one corporation holds a powerful position because of a certain life extending drug. With T7 Tonfamecasca "owns post-mortality". Cal is now part of the family, having had no choice but to take a dose or else die, becoming in the process a Titan. As such, with continuing doses, you can rewind the clock and become almost immortal, but a Titan can still be killed. There are other drawbacks, and for Cal the immediate problem as a one-dose Titan is being taken seriously as a 41 year old investigator when you have a babyface that makes you looks 20 years old or younger. With most Titans most now over 100 years old, Sounder is indeed practically a baby, but because of that easy to underestimate by the unwary.

Not that there are not too many unwary characters in Shearwater, the land and main industries all owned by the influential Erskine family. Cal is there on the request of the family matriarch and Titan Martha Erskine; she needs someone who isn't pushed in the obvious directions that point to a young member of the family as a potential murderer, the wayward Torrance. It's too easy an answer for the local police - and for some others in the family jostling for position - so she needs someone with an open mind to consider that as a possibility but probe a little deeper. Inevitably, when it comes to old influential families, there is a lot of dirt that gets dragged out into the open.

As with previous book Titanium Noir, the whole feel is familiar from classic Raymond Chandler and American post-war noir movies. There are rich, decadent families with secret vices and a tearaway younger member of the family who is either missing or in trouble and the family need their indiscretions covered up, preferably quietly and discreetly without stirring up much public interest. It never works out that way of course. The Titanium Noir series expands on that theme in more ways than one with the SF near-futuristic setting, hardboiled dialogue and ready wit, but with a different perspective in a world that has different rules and attitudes towards life and humanity. That creates some surreal moments, but in a way it still goes to deep human places.

I'm not quite sure exactly how Nick Harkaway does it, or whether it's just my impression, but there is a wonderful seediness to the novel that fits the noir worldview perfectly. It's even in the way that Cal feels uncomfortable in his own skin and how that affects his relationship with the world around him. All the traditional noir archetypes are there of course, but elevated and highlighted in the lofty heights of the Titans set against the little people and their sad little short lives. We can feel the influence of Philip K Dick and Blade Runner there again maybe, but the dystopian feel - or indeed classic noir - extends to Cal doing hard footwork, meeting people in person and taking in his surroundings, not relying on high technology or even Google Maps.

The general wider state of the future/alternate world's political, social and technological position was of little concern in Titanium Noir and it’s not really the main area of interest here either, although we get more of a sense of the social divisions that exist and it's not difficult to relate them to the world today. "The old rich don't die, they just get bigger". And Sleeper Beach is indeed about the big people and the little people as individuals, what they do when they occupy those positions of power while all around is in decline, and the lengths they are willing to go to keep hold of it. For a work of an alternative world, it sure sounds a lot like the one we are familiar with.

In Sleeper Beach things progressively get complicated and then more complicated with new names thrown into the hat. Despite Cal regularly tallying up the current position of the investigation, you can struggle to remember the context in which some of those names first cropped up. It doesn't matter, even when it seems like there isn't much progress being made, there is always an encounter or confrontation that results in a smart-alec exchange with a witty or withering putdown, and when that won't do you can always rely on Cal to throw a Titanic punch that shakes out a few cobwebs, a few walls and a few bones.

However he does it, Nick Harkaway achieves an ideal blend of classic noir and alternative reality in Sleeper Beach and the Titanium Noir series that sheds some light on the contemporary world we live in, which means that there are some satisfying moments of recognition and relatability, but it remains dominated by that essential noirish air of world weariness and fatalism about the state of the world and the uncertainty of the direction it's heading in.

ive seen people say this was a bit too political. and i have a gripe with that because people only seem to mind this when its "woke"issues or to be "far left". which sits sensibly in a world that can be seen as becoming cruel and harmful. so lessons learnt via the art of books are fine with me. how can anyone have a problem with being too kind or wanting to treat people right i have no idea.
and i think regarding this book there are some very real greed, power and hierarchy issues written about. but i think its done well and feel far enough apart from being politically motivated or biast.
it was a bit too much for me as i think it excused alot of behavior because it was just part of living in that time. but this characteristic seemed to apply to the main character and im not sure i felt comfortable with this.

Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway is a gripping and thought-provoking continuation of the Cal Sounder series. Set in a rundown holiday town, the novel opens with a chilling murder that hits close to home for Martha Erskine, a powerful matriarch. She suspects a member of her own family might be involved in the crime and enlists Cal Sounder, a detective and reluctant Titan, to investigate.

Cal’s life has been complicated by his use of T7, a rare drug that transforms its users into Titans—larger, younger, and more powerful with each dose. His struggle to reconcile his humanity with his growing, almost otherworldly power is a central theme in the story. As he delves into the murder, he uncovers a web of deception, political tension, and conflict that shakes the foundation of the town and its inhabitants. No one, not even the victim, is who they appear to be.

The novel takes a deep dive into the implications of power, age, and greed, exploring how these themes intersect in both the personal and societal spheres. As Cal grapples with the moral and ethical questions surrounding his newfound abilities, he also faces the reality of what it means to be ordinary when you are anything but.

Sleeper Beach offers a complex and compelling narrative, filled with twists and layers of intrigue. It is not only a murder mystery but also a profound exploration of identity and the consequences of unchecked power. The political undercurrent and social commentary add depth to the plot, making it more than just a typical detective story.

For readers who enjoy intellectually stimulating thrillers with a touch of speculative fiction, Sleeper Beach is a must-read. As the second book in the series, it continues to build on the rich world established in the first, leaving readers eager to see where Cal’s journey will take him next.

3.5/5.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.