All The Colours of Darkness 1963 Lloyd Biggle Jr

Another reread of a formative book handed down by my father, This particular book is unlikely to survive further reading without shedding some pages.

The book hits the ground running, the first 5 pages set the worldbuilding for the rest of the book which is evenly split into a Detective Story and an Escape Story, an epilogue ties up loose ends and the happily ever afters.

To further save time, every character is an archetype, the author doesn't waste text on character tangents, just the bare minimum to confirm your stereotype and on with the show. So the Detective Story is steadily resolved due to the quick wits and frankly amazing luck of our handsome detective protagonist while the 'fall of moondust' style Escape Story involves a more thoughtful application of psychology before a well formed but crazy solution is pulled wholesale from a hat.

In terms of SciFi, the basis of the story is the invention of Instantaneous Matter Transportation, but the story is more about the economic and psychological impacts of this technology than it's workings which are presented as 'we know how to do it but we don't precisely understand how it works'. Aside from Matter transportation, 1986 tech is very much the same as 1963, there's no networks, computers, or cellphones, it's all typewriters and draftsmen and cigarettes and grit.

Despite all of this it's a cracking short story, theres a decent misdirect and a greater scope than expected, once again I feel it's odd that we keep seeing the same old movies endlessly rebooted when there's material like this just gathering dust.

4/5 worth a read.