The novel “Great North Road” by Peter F. Hamilton was published for the first time in 2012.
The year 2143 begins in a complicated way for Newcastle police detective Sidney Hurst when he arrives on a murder scene. The victim is a member of the powerful North family, which means that it’s a very high profile case. The case quickly becomes more complicated when the wounds suffered by the victim turn out to be the same as those found in a murder that took place twenty years earlier, perpetrated on the planet St Libra, in which one of the victims was one of the most important members of the North family.
Angela Tramelo, who was convicted for that old multiple murder, always claimed that the real culprit was an alien but wasn’t believed because no one found traces of alien presences on the crime scene. The case gets reopened and Angela is put in the custody of the Human Defence Alliance (HDA), which plans to start an expedition to St Libra to investigate a possible alien presence that could threaten the largest producer of bio-fuel and maybe the whole of humanity.
Peter F. Hamilton is best known for his space operas which in fact are very long novels split into two or three books. Instead, “Great North Road” is a single novel that has little of space opera and tells an independent story that has an end. There’s still the length, nearly 1,100 pages in the hardcover edition, given by the subplots in which the novel is divided, as is typical of this author.
“Great North Road” begins as a science fiction detective story, with the discovery of a murder. It soon becomes clear that this is not a common crime because the victim is a member of the North family. The man isn’t identified with precision because he has no personal ID with him but the Norths are clones so they are easily recognizable.
The consequences of this crime leads to a complex development of the story with the gradual introduction of many characters and future technologies to allow us to get to know this fictional universe. The future told by Peter F. Hamilton isn’t very different from ours despite technological advances, which include the ability to open wormholes that allow an instantaneous journey to other planets, so it’s not difficult for the reader to understand the characters’ actions.
In the future of “Great North Road” fossil fuels have been replaced not by renewable sources but by bio-fuels. The largest producer is the planet St Libra thanks to the activity of a part of the North family. It’s there that one of the novel’s subplots is set and the connection between a multiple murder happened in the past and the one discovered at its beginning represents the mystery behind the story.
The way in which the North clone was killed is identical to the one used to kill a group of people, including another North, twenty years before. Angela Tramelo, who was convicted for those murders, has a chance to finally prove her innocence but her inclusion in a military expedition run by the Human Defence Alliance helps to make the mystery deeper.
The subplots involving the Newcastle police investigation and the expedition on St Libra are the main ones of “Great North Road”. Various elements of the mystery surrounding the murders are revealed in the course of the novel in a story that takes many different ramifications concerning the North family but also other characters, especially Angela Tramelo.
“Great North Road” is also the story of the mystery around Angela Tramelo. She’s the only survivor of a massacre that took place in the villa of one of the most important members of the North family, where she worked essentially as a prostitute to his exclusive service.
After twenty years in prison, Angela’s look hasn’t changed a bit thanks to a longevity treatment but it’s very expensive, so much that only the richest people can afford it. Soon, it becomes clear that Angela is hiding something and the discovery of her secrets, also through flashbacks about her past, proceeds in parallel with that of the investigation on possible alien presence on St Libra.
The two main subplots are tied to the two possible solutions to the mystery of the murders. The investigation carried out in Newcastle makes the cops think more and more that they’re the result of an economic war between corporations, perhaps even of a clash within the North family. On the contrary, the expedition on St Libra makes its leaders think more and more that there really is an alien presence.
The complexity of the story, with many seemingly contradictory clues, is used by Peter F. Hamilton to make a very long novel interesting. The author leaves here and there several clues that can help the reader understand why the investigation in Newcastle lead more and more to conclusions that seem at odds with what happens on St Libra, where something starts attacking the members of the HDA expedition easily killing well-trained soldiers.
Inevitably, the pace is faster in the subplot set on St Libra, where there’s much action. Trivializing those subplots to the extreme, it’s as if Peter F. Hamilton had put together the plot of the movie “Predator” for the subplot set on St Libra with that of CSI for the subplot set in Newcastle. The murder of a North is so high profile that the investigation is supervised at high levels and detective Sidney Hurst must also handle his superiors. For this reason, the pace of that subplot tends to be slow.
As if the story wasn’t complex enough, there’s the question of the aliens. The HDA was created at the end of the 21st century to fight the Zanth threat. It’s an alien entity potentially very destructive but after decades humans haven’t been able to really understand it. Many members of the HDA have deep religious convictions and this is one of the themes of the subplot set on St Libra.
In “Great North Road” there are a lot of characters. The important ones are well developed and in the course of the novel Peter F. Hamilton reveals their personalities, their desires and aspirations, their motives. Of some of them their secrets are revealed as well, which are one of the bases of the novel.
Perhaps the conclusion is a bit too simple for a novel that’s so long and complex but I think “Great North Road” is very good. If you’re not afraid of stories full of ramifications and you like those full of mysteries this is a must-read novel.
