George Mann’s new novel, Ghosts of Manhattan (available from Pyr Books), had me at its tag-line, “Introducing the World’s First Steampunk Superhero!” Two of my favorite genres in one–what an awesome concept! Also, unlike most steampunk today, this novel distinguishes itself by not being set in Victorian-era England but in the Roaring Twenties in Manhattan, circa 1927, not long before comic book superheroes would begin to emerge as a pop cultural force. This novel’s Caped Crusader, the Ghost, is a hardcore blend of the darkest, non-superpowered superheroes, such as Batman and the Phantom, but ten times as gruesome in his tactics. He is vengeance and justice incarnate. Villains beware, for the Ghost leaves practically no criminal standing. Whereas Batman might rough up a crook and then deliver him to the police on a silver platter, the Ghost will leave him a bloody, mangled mess on the floor, thanks to his brutish strength and truly terrifying steampunk gadgets, which tear flesh, shatter bone, and worse.
Ghosts of Manhattan is a brilliant hybrid of superhero/vigilante tale, film noir, and 1920s decadence. Mann submerges the reader in an alternative New York City where Art Deco buildings, jazz clubs, speakeasies, flappers, and gangsters meet cars powered by coal, dirigibles, holo-booths (a sort of retro-videophone technology), self-lighting cigarettes, and mammoth Tessla coils in such a naturalistic manner, one would be excused for forgetting the world wasn’t actually like this back then. He plays with cinematic, comics, and literary tropes such as ritualistic mob slaughters, the sexy female jazz singer with a shadowy past, the good cop tempted by the bad guys to corrupt his morals, and the seemingly lackadaisical, wealthy playboy who parties his life away to cushion his inner darkness–the latter is a clear homage to Jay Gatsby, complete with Long Island mansion–but imbues all of his characters and situations with three-dimensional complexity that belies the notion that this is simple pastiche. One comes to care about all the characters deeply, even the Ghost.
One might reductively classify Ghosts of Manhattan as Watchmen meets Sin City meets F. Scott Fitzgerald meets H.P. Lovecraft (in a surprising shift into the quasi-supernatural as the novel proceeds), but really, it is much more than that. It is an exceedingly dark character study of damaged characters attempting to make the world a better place than it has been for them. It is a portrait of a world just one step removed from our reality, a New York that never was but could have been. It is a thematic rumination on the nature of heroism, blessed with exquisite prose, twisty mystery (one revelation in particular almost made me want to start reading all over again, to note the earlier clues), genuinely thrilling suspense, and cracking violence–a beautifully crafted novel whose dark heart is counterbalanced with small moments of unexpected tenderness. And dirigibles.
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