Robert Sawyer's Red Planet Blues: Neither Fish nor Fowl

 Robert J. Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

It’s hard to track a person if you don’t know what body he’s in. He could look like anyone –his own self, a movie star, your best friend… Alex Lomax, greatest private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars (in large part because he’s the only private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars) pretty much has a system, however. He kills ‘em all and lets God sort ‘em out. 

No, to be fair, he doesn’t kill them all: if they’re female, he beds them and then kills them (or tries, anyway). In the finest noir detective tradition, Lomax chases every skirt that comes his way and whips out his other rod for the men. Mike Hammer on Mars? Maybe… 

Owen Laukkanen, Criminal Enterprise: The Sophomore Slump Strikes Again

Criminal Enterprise - Owen Laukkanen

Like many a man, Carter Tomlin defined himself by his profession - a profession in which he was successful; so successful that he and his gorgeous wife and two daughters could live in a St. Paul mansion and he could tool around in an $80K Jaguar. When the middle-aged accountant was handed a pink slip, however, life took a turn for the worse. As weeks turned into months and the bills mounted, Tomlin started getting desperate. 

The reason bank robbers get caught, some claim, is that they're stupid: they make mistakes, they brag to the wrong people, they flash the cash in the wrong place. Carter Tomlin, however, was smart. He robbed again. And again. And after a year or so, he'd assembled a crew of three and perfected his method - a method that, naturally, brought him to the attention of the local office of the FBI.

Enter Carla Windermere... the day Windermere showed up on his doorstep was the day the wheels started to come off Carter Tomlin's little Criminal Enterprise. It would only get worse... 

That's when he robbed his first bank.