Michelle Herbert reviews The Night Mayor by Kim Newman…
The Night Mayor is set in a future reality, where films (known as flatties) are no longer watched on screens; instead people immerse themselves in Dreams where using virtual reality technology the viewer enters a Dream and becomes the main character following the storyline that has been created by the Dreamer. Because of the nature of the story, we don’t really get to explore much of the actual world, it is a technologically advanced society led by an A.I. called Yggdrasil. This is because we are about to explore a very specific Dream.
The two main characters are Susan Bishopric and Tom Tunney, who both have the talent to create Dreams. Susan’s Dreams are on the rise and she is finally being given the creative freedom to shape the Dreams as she wants them rather than having to work with a computer programme. Tom Tunney on the other hand has made a career out of writing detective Dreams, both are individually conscripted to Public Service in the hopes that their specific skill sets will help in a very unusual situation.
What Susan and Tom find out is that master criminal Truro Daine is no longer incarcerated. Daine has managed to escape a maximum security jail into a Dream universe he has created where he is omnipotent. It is up to Susan and Tom to locate Daine and kill him. What neither of them realise is that this will be easier said than done.
Truro Daine’s Dream has a film noir setting, where everything is black and white and set in the early hours of the morning. Truro’s Dream is populated with characters from popular film noir; the tropes are familiar and include many famous actors and actresses locked into their most famous roles. Tom is the first to enter Truro’s dream, as he writes detective stories he enters the dream in the guise of his character Richie Quick. As most Dreams run on logic Tom believes that his character as the “good guy” will ultimately solve his case and get the girl. Tom’s chapters are exclusively told in the first person and give the impression that you are in a Raymond Chandler novel having to double guess every ones motives around you and constantly being kicked to the curb.
Susan is conscripted later and as a Dreamer of romance stories, needs to come up with a character that will not fall into the usual plot holes for women in film noir. Susan has a much better grounding in how Dreams work than Tom and instead of following the plot, goes about making changes to the fabric of the Dream in her hunt for Truro. Susan’s chapters are all told from a third person perspective, which considerably changes the tone of her chapters to that of Tom’s. In Susan’s case we are always watching her actions rather than listening to her thoughts.
There is a hint of danger throughout the book. Susan and Tom are facing a master criminal who has killed in the real world; there is a large chance that Truro Daine may kill them in his Dream. In this reality will dying in this Dream kill me in real life? As Tom becomes more embroiled with the film noir setting he finds himself believing he is Richie Quick, this is not a situation you want to find yourself in as losing yourself means there is a chance that you won’t be able to leave the dream. Susan has different problems as she is clashing with Daine on a different level from Tom, she has to fight to keep her mind together rather than worrying about getting caught in the plot.
Truro’s dream is a fairly standard noir thriller; Truro has set himself up as a philanthropist hero loved throughout the city whilst he pulls the city’s strings for his own gain. This means that Truro has the police and the underworld in his pocket and it is easy for him to set Tom, as Richie Quick, to be the fall guy in a murder. In these stories the detective must solve the crime to absolve themselves.
All in all, I found The Night Mayor to be a fun read. The book has a really interesting concept, although the characters are a bit hit and miss as they do not feel truly three-dimensional. The highlights are the intense moments where you wonder whether Susan and Tom will ever be free of the Dream. As well as some great scenes that are recognisable from films you may have seen that have been masterfully manipulated to work in this book. Kim Newman has a fantastic knowledge of film history and genres and this is where this book shines.
Michelle Herbert
https://youtu.be/yIuEu1m0p2M?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 15, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
