Titanium Noir is an absolute triumph of vibes.  Cal Sounder is a private eye who specializes in a very special field: the affairs of the Titans, the tremendously wealthy, immortal, and large biomedical elite of society. So when Roddy Tebbit, seven feet tall and 91 years old, is found shot in the head in his apartment, it's Cal's job to find answers. Justice is not a thing that happens.

The noir detective is a classical liminal figure, standing Janus-faced at the boundary between civil society and the criminal underworld. Cal's liminality is doubled since he also stands between Titans and humans.  He wanders through his winter city on an alpine lake browbeating various unfriendly contacts and trying to assemble the pieces of Roddy's life and death. Nothing involving the lives of Titans is clean or easy or just, and Roddy's murder is tied up with an ancient sin of the Titans. Because the basic rule of noir is that the very powerful are also very human, and their human weaknesses (sex, dominance, oblivion, kindness) are their undoing.

Titanium Noir also follows Raymond Chandler's dictum, "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." There's plenty of violence, and fortunately for Cal he's a preternaturally gifted dirty fighter. Some of the secondary characters sparkle:  Stefan Tonfamecasca, creator of the titan process, house-sized, capable of laughing a man to pieces. Athena, Stefan's daughter and right-hand, and Cal's ex, the two of them joined by longing and separated by Cal's lingering humanity. Victor, a bar owner who runs a Titan-focused establishment where anything can happen, and does. Many of the less memorable characters have a perfectly tuned weariness and cynicism. Harkaway's dialog and description is like lightening.

Yet there's a weak spot in this book, a gap that vibes can't bridge, and that's the character of Doublewide, a criminal boss of oddly delicate temperament and trust, and also a freak of the titanization process, who became much wider but not taller. Doublewide wore out his welcome in about five pages, and absolutely fails to serve as a counter to Stefan Tonfamecasca in any narrative sense, and yet provides the vital clue that sets Cal along the path towards answers, through ancient Titan history become fairytale. 

Vibes are good. Greatness needs more.