The thing that struck him most, as the weeks and months went by, was how matter-of-fact everyone was about the whole thing. It was as if generations of comic books and movies had made them view superpowers as something to be taken for granted. [loc. 5073]The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man's protagonist, Alex Dolan, has a certain laid-back cynicism that reminds me of various characters from the 'Fractured Europe' series: however, this is, at least for the first two-thirds of the book, a more traditional technothriller.
Alex is a Scottish journalist living in New York, watching the bills pile up but unable or unwilling to tackle the job market afresh after being made redundant from his high-flying print-media employment. One day he wakes up to find out that all his bills have been paid, an overture from the world's fifth richest man -- Stan Clayton, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist who's built his own supercollider and incidentally rejuvenated the small town of Sioux Crossing. Clayton wants someone to bring a sensawunda to the project, and he thinks Dolan can do the job.
Things are ... not quite normal in Sioux Crossing. The previous inhabitants of Alex's new house seem to have departed in quite a hurry; there are rumours of mysterious figures being sighted around town; there is surprisingly little hostility from the townsfolk towards the project which has effectively bought up their town and its economy; and a British intelligence agent is keen that Dolan report back his findings. Assuming he ever makes any.
It's a low-key, small-town thriller for most of the way: Clayton's supercollider doesn't actually work, Alex struggles to get his book together, there's a budding relationship that's so coyly described I really wasn't sure whether it was happening or not. Shades of Stephenson in Alex's reluctant relish of the weirdness and friendliness of his neighbours. Then ... then everything changes: and in the last few chapters it becomes quite a different sort of book, at once filled with 'sensawunda' and decidedly bleak and downbeat. And reminiscent of Watchmen (original graphic novel rather than TV).
It was a good read but didn't wow me in the way that much of Hutchinson's other work has done.
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