Jack Glass

Name: Jack Glass
Brand: Hachette UK
Availability: InStock
Rating: 3 (1 reviews)
Author: Adam Roberts
ISBN: 9781409179184

Author: Adam Roberts

Narrator: Elliot Chapman

Unabridged: 13 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: 12/31/2017

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction, Crime

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE BSFA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Jack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged.

Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, JACK GLASS is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain and JACK GLASS has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits and comes with liberal doses of sly humour.

Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challenges notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom. It is an extraordinary novel.

(p) Orin Publishing Group with Audible 2017

About Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is commonly described as one of the UK's most important writers of SF. He is the author of numerous novels and literary parodies. He is Professor of 19th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, London University and has written a number of critical works on both SF and 19th Century poetry. He is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lena on March 23, 2024

Space dystopia where greedy corporations rule the Solar system and one mysterious (anti)hero rebels against them. Poignant, violent and graphic. Repulsive characters but the plot is engaging. Interesting technological predictions and worldbuilding but the story barely scratches the surface of it all......more

Goodreads review by Scott on February 13, 2022

Beware. Don't go to Adam Roberts looking for utopian visions of the future. If you want harmonious co-operation, post-scarcity paradises or futures where humanity has forged its nobler instincts into the foundations of Brave New Worlds, look elsewhere - most of Robert's books will give you screaming......more

Goodreads review by Andrei(Drusca) on February 18, 2025

Great......more

Goodreads review by Mike on June 20, 2013

What a wonderful thing this book is! Roberts himself describes it as arising from "a desire to collide together some of the conventions of 'Golden Age' science fiction and 'Golden Age' detective fiction." He does that beautifully, but he does so much more. Does the book satisfy as a mystery? One hund......more

Goodreads review by Guy on September 05, 2012

Roberts' books are truly difficult to rate, because there isn't anything else like them in the modern SF genre. He writes beautifully, really beautifully; the kind of image-dense, well-crafted sentences that you have to read three times just to savour the feel of them sliding through your neurons. H......more

Quotes

A smart and ingenius writer Christopher Priest

Clever, inventive and above all a fantastic read SF Book

Perfectly plotted, winningly worded, and as rewarding, despite everything, as anything you're apt to read this year, this trifecta of golden age goodness is yet another example of Adam Roberts' tremendous talents Tor.com

Awards

BSFA Award
John W. Campbell Memorial Award