Nick Petrie is the author of six novels in the Peter Ash series, most recently The Breaker. His debut, The Drifter, won both the ITW Thriller award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the Edgar and the Hammett Awards.
At CrimeReads, Petrie tagged nine top science fiction novels built on the chassis of crime fiction, including:
Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan (2003)Read about the other entries on the list.
This hardboiled novel is set in the far future, where interstellar travel is performed by transferring one’s consciousness between bodies—known as “sleeves.” Theprotagonist is Takeshi Kovacs, a deeply cynical former elite U.N. soldier turned private detective, hired to investigate the murder of a wealthy man—by the man himself, who had preserved his consciousness as a backup several days before his death.
With its political and religious themes, Altered Carbon is both a rich read and over-the-top fun, full of sex, violence, and glorious storytelling. It’s also the first in a trilogy, and Morgan only gets better with the second and third books.
Altered Carbon is among Neal Asher's top five favorite about achieving immortality, Ernest Cline’s ten favorite SF novels, Jeff Somers's five books that lived up to the hype, Lauren Davis's ten most depressing futuristic retirement scenarios in science fiction and Charlie Jane Anders's top ten science fiction novels that pack more action than most summer movies and top 10 science fiction detective novels of all time.
--Marshal Zeringue
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