Dayfall

Dayfall
By Michael David Ares

At least since the success of the movie Blade Runner, the conventions of noir and SF have seemed a natural fit. In Dayfall, the debut novel from Michael David Ares, the genre connection is made explicit, as our hero, police detective Jon Phillips, is a big fan of the detective stories of Raymond Chandler. Indeed, he’s so keen on being just like Chandler’s fictional gumshoe Philip Marlowe that he hangs out at bars and affects to be a hard drinker even though he doesn’t enjoy the taste of alcohol.

Phillips has gone to New York City to help solve a series of violent crimes that seem connected to an event known as Dayfall. You see, the Big Apple has been under a nuclear-forged cloud of darkness for a decade and the sun is finally going to come out, which is something that threatens to throw the city into chaos.

With a cast including a power-hungry CEO, a sexy bartender, corrupt politicians, and various hired guns, Phillips has his work cut out for him to uncover all the plots, and plots within plots, that lie in the darkness.