Review of Nine Tenths by Jeff Macfee

The blue collar, world weary mystery solver with issues has been a thing for a century+. Existential troubles served with a bottle and pack of Marlboros, such men go about their sleuthing with a skeptical eye to their raison d'etre. You know it. You've read it. And yet it remains all about execution; write it well, and the formula can still sing, such is the border separating readable noir from derivative. Let's see where Jeff Macfee's cybernoir Nine Tenths (2022) falls on the spectrum.

Gayle is a repo man of cyber augments. Once working in the murky underworld of organized crime, he's gone clean and opened a business collecting the body implants and expensive tech that people are unable to pay for. But his past is not so far behind. A powerful piece of cyber tech that was supposed to be in government hands has gone missing and both sides, the police and criminals, think that Gayle can help them get it. Squeezed from all around, Gayle is forced to join the hunt in an attempt to finally put the past behind him.

Sounds like a classic plot, yes? Nine Tenths is indeed classic—Dashiel Hammett in a William Gibson world. Macfee seems a student of such writers and is offering his own cybernoir for a new generation.

Noir, regardless cyber or Humphrey Bogart, is highly dependent on a couple of things, one of which is tone. The writer's ability to pull off a cynical, world-weary voice in a mix of original and semi-original fashion goes a long way toward dictating whether the story will be a success or not. While there are other writers who do it better, Macfee pulls it off for the most part. He never misses an opening, and the jaded one-liners have an edge to their cut. Some are great and most do the job, thus giving the novel the world weariness it needs.

Another thing a lot of noir stories depend on is the abstraction of the main character from people—the lone wolf with few friends who does things their own way despite the hindrances of the police and criminals. Again, Macfee gets this right, mostly. To Gayle the world is out to get him, badge or not, so he sticks to his daughter and himself, using practical ingenuity to get himself out of sticky situations.

If there are any challenges to Nine Tenths, one would be that it doesn't feel wholly organic, natural. The attentive reader will notice above I hedged my opinions with “largely” and “mostly” and other such qualifiers. Macfee is an up-and-coming writer, and such the noir still feels a touch forced—just a touch, but enough to be noticed. The reader can feel on most pages that he's actively aiming for a mold. Again, for the most part it's done right; the reader can overlook the obviousness. Nevertheless, they can feel Nine Tenths isn't a Lamborghini, rather a Lamborghini SUV—a reaction to something instead of something original in and of itself.

In the end, Nine Tenths is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a solid piece of cybernoir. Where a lot of writers these days tend to let such stories waffle with unnecessary exposition scattered throughout, Macfee keeps his narrative tight and focused. Diction is on point, providing readers the authorial voice they want, i.e. the world weary man with problems all around but who still pulls himself up by the bootstraps to occasionally kick ass. My only real knock against the book is that its derivative nature can be felt as a silent undercurrent. For readers unfamiliar with Hammett, Chandler, Gibson, and others, however, this will not be an issue.