Sharp and Marked follow Clean, a book about a recovering drug addict/telepath who works with the police in a dystopian future.
Sharp does a good job of presenting normal appearing cases in the foreground. They almost feel like a day-in-the-life, but it’s clear that good police and interrogation work aren’t the only dimension for Adam. The world of the police and politics gets further defined, as Adam and Cheribino (and now Michael) tackle a few apparently unrelated cases… and we, the readers, learn a bit more about tech control in this world.
Kara and the guild loom in the background; well, they come to the fore when Adam is investigated as a consequence of the first book’s events. We learn a bit about the Guild Enforcers and their absolute and looming authority… but the development is more on the mundane side. We get a better feel for everyday life in this post-crash work; the budget and political priorities feels like they’d ring true even today. Adam’s addiction remains a major theme that’s handled well–it’s ever present but rarely takes over the story.
The end feels a little artificial with the way the strings all come together so thoroughly, but it’s not that great a stretch. Throughout, though, Adam really does feel like a guy with so many things going on that he’s not going to be able to keep all of those plates spinning. Stress, frustration–and in this book particularly, lingering consequences, all add up to a guy who can’t please everyone but does an amazing job given how many ways he’s pulled.
In Marked, Adam has more of his telepathy, which is nice–it makes it feel more like the suggested high level concept (psychic investigator). This book delves much deeper into the telepath side of things; while Alex is juggling police commitments, a call from Kara near the start of the book plunges him into the Guild and its struggles.
There’s good world building, as we encounter the various guild factions and learn how they interact in their own spaces. The guild/tech theme from other books remains a strong current in this one, though we also learn about contagious madness and other unique threats to telepaths.
Over the course of the book, several true things change, leaving Adam in a very different position at the end then at the beginning. It’s a nice progression; book 2 kicked off with a lot of consequences from book 1, and Alex at the end of book 3 is in a very different place for finances and romance than he’s been before. There’s no sense of episodic writing or of a story not fitting in a very specific time in his life. It seems like the last few years were a bit of stasis, but everything is changing now. I am looking forward to book 4, Vacant, due out in December.