Review: New York Minute by Stephen Aryan

Rating: 9/10

So good he named it once

A noir story, set in an alternate New York City.

After years of being a cop, and now a private investigator, there’s little that surprises Cole Blackstone. But when someone working for Karl Dolman, the most notorious crime boss in the city asks for his help, Cole is caught off guard, and more than a little afraid.

Dolman’s daughter, Selina, has gone missing. To prevent a gang war that will tear the city apart, Cole must find her. But the job is being made more difficult as everyone is interfering, cops and criminals, and no one wants him to succeed.

Together with his childhood friend, Bracken Hart, the two men must navigate the depths of the city’s underworld for answers.In a race against the clock, Cole needs to find out what happened to Selina, and who is responsible, before the streets run red.

Speculative noir or SFF noir, or urban fantasy noir, or whatever my scattershot brain is calling it on any given day, goes together like tomatoes and cheese, and if you think that means I want Italian tonight, you’d be right.

But it’s also devilishly hard to write. SFF requires a focus on creative worldbuilding, and a departure, in some ways, from realism. But noir is about the drab of the everyday, the poignancy and hope of the familiar streets. Can private eyes really go with the otherworldly? Well frequently yes, if you’re a good writer.

And Stephen Aryan, normally an epic/historical fantasy author, is a great writer, and his first dip into noir – also his first foray into self publishing, intriguingly – is a clear demonstration of this.

In this bite-sized novella, we have an alternate New York. Aryan shows his worldbuilding pedigree by crafting in just a few opening paragraphs an intriguing set up as to where we are (never fully explained, which I like) and why this New York is different. The key twist here is that the modern heights of New York have been abandoned (for an intriguing reason) for the low-tech, pre-modern ways. Electricity out, gas lamps in, etc. Old tech is still around, but it’s failing—and the old ways are taking over.

As well as being a fun concept, this is perfect for noir, which thrives in the sense of a world gone to seed, of the dingy and the failed but the still, in some ways, hopeful. Is this world better or worse than the past? It’s a thread Aryan keeps pulling at with interesting consequences

As for the noir plot itself? It’s a private eye investigating the missing daughter of a drug baron. And using this classic template, Aryan shows his command of the whiplash, deadpan, witty noir dialogue and prose I love. Lots of lines to chuckle at here. But true noir is also about the concise but deadly accurate analysis of character and soul – The Raymond Chandler gift – and Aryan shows he gets this with his private eye’s analysis of a crime boss: “it’s as if all his love and kindness was sinking beneath his skin, like sediment to the bottom of a glass of beer”. Superb.

As our private eye wanders round the city, bargaining with friend and foe, unearthing the mystery, he also unearths the soul of a city. Is this a place escaping from the sins of previous worlds, or mimicking them? This is character-driven noir, with some hard emotional beats. Everyone we meet has their mask stripped away, and their real self revealed.

Put aside my noir-obsessed noodling, and I should also point out that it’s a rollicking great plot with multiple twists and unexpected amounts of brutal, grisly, no-holds barred violence, and one that ends on the promise of more stories and violence to come. And I desperately want to know more about the Wilds, the expanses outside of this alternate New York where other re-dos at cities have arisen and chaos reigns.

Start spreading the news: Aryan’s poignant, witty, brutally violent, emotionally real and fascinating alternate New York is the speculative noir treat you need. We know Aryan gets fantasy, but what a joy it is to find he gets noir, too. I’m sold.