The setting of Sacrifice of Fools parallels situations happening in the western world today, for example the influx of Somalians to rural American towns, Syrians into Europe, etc. In McDonald's novel, the Somalians and Syrians are the Shian, an alien race who has flown light years across the galaxy to trade tech and find a new home. (Not sure what tech the Somalians and Syrians are trading, but you get it.) And rural America and urban Europe are 1990s Northern Ireland, a place still rife with Protestant-Catholic tensions as well as conflicting views to how the Shian should be handled. And in this clash of cultures there develops a small subset of Northern Irish who want to appear and act like the Shian, up to and including body modification surgery. Uncanny the parallels...
The framework of Sacrifice of Fools is classic noir mystery. Naturally, a murder takes place in the opening chapters: a family of Shian, parents and children alike, have their heads blown off by alien technology. And so too their genitalia. The Shian are like cats or dogs in that they are fertile only once per year. This period is a mad, feverish time for the Shian, as otherwise, sex and sexuality play zero role in their lives. They are virtually sexless, which makes this latter detail of the murders highly bizarre. Investigating the deaths is the main character, Andy Gillespie. An ex-con, he uses his underworld knowledge to atone for his sins and help the community, regardless Shian or human. The murder investigation puts to the test his goodwill in ways he never dreamed.
Based on that setup, it will be no surprise Sacrifice of Fools is a meditation on sexual violence, and to a lesser degree, cultural identity. (Very 2026 despite the fact the novel was published in 1996, no?) The Shian act as a mirror to humanity's prevalence, or least male humans' prevalence, toward sexualized violence. And McDonald makes no bones about this theme, routinely returning to the topic as it manifests itself in the course of Gillespie's clue gathering. In fact, readers hoping for a pure noir mystery may be disappointed by McDonald's semi-regular poetic rhapsodizing on sex and violence. I will not spoil it here, but the climax is a scene that most leftists today would criticize.
But I would not say theme is overwhelming, just overt. McDonald balances the narrative with effective characterization and dialogue. He has always been one of the best prose artists in the business, sometimes even too gonzo (looking at you, Out on Blue Six). But in Sacrifice of Fools he finds a happy medium that drives story, is full of poetic color, yet perpetually retains a relationship to the hard realities of the story and our world. There are many excellent turns of phrase and alliteration, which make reading a joy regardless the substance.
In the end, Sacrifice of Fools is accidentally a book published before its time. McDonald may have been able to guess that immigration and cultural conflicts would rise to the surface in the West in the way they have the past thirty years. But it's doubtful he would have ever imagined the sex and gender issues appearing as they do. As such, modern readers will likely fall to either side of the fence reading the novel. Believe that indeed, men are the source of all evil: you might enjoy the book (save the climax). Believe that gender ideology today is overblown, and you might also turn away. If, however, you are a deep sea diver of science fiction from yesteryear and can appreciate nuance in your speculative fiction, as well as understand the cultural context in which McDonald was writing, there is a good chance to appreciate the novel. Sacrifice of Fools is a proper noir mystery (the conclusion is as classic as it gets) written in prose that makes 95% of spec fic writers today blush they can't do the same.
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