In the first novel of the series, Clean (my review), we met Adam, the level 8 telepath who was kicked out of the Guild and now makes his living as an interrogator for the police. The Guild doesn’t trust him outside the Guild since they worry about him telling Guild secrets and the police worry that he’s secretly siding with the Guild. In the sequel, Sharp, Adam must confront the people he hurt directly on his way out of the Guild. Alex Hughes has created an interesting, flawed character that presents a lot of wonderful story telling opportunities. Let’s see what happened.
After the events of the first novel, the ramifications have Adam out of sorts. His powers are flakey, so he needs some time to heal. But the police department is having budgetary issues and he needs to worry about his job. In addition, the close link that he and Cherabino formed has freaked her out somewhat, so she is putting distance between them to give the link time to close up. Adam has two cases which might be related. One is a series of truck hijackings. The cargo was components that could be used in illegal tech. Adam worries that the Guild’s secret projects with Tech might be involved. The second case is a murder. But the victim is one of the people who Adam hurt while teaching for the Guild while on drugs. He not only hurt three people, he mangled their brains so much that they lost their psychic ability completely. Now one of them is dead and it might be the work of an assassin hired by a mob boss.
Along the journey, Adam has to deal with a Guild Investigator who has the authority to kill Adam if he decides that Adam is a problem. The police budgetary issues are forcing Adam to make a choice of whether he needs to get more involved with the Guild. And tracking the assassin is putting Adam in the path of the political and jurisdictional issues that pop up when you get too close to a mob boss investigation. Cherabino has a family situation that could force Adam to choose between his current life and the Guild. And to make things worse, Adam’s Narcotics Anonymous guide gets sick and Adam starts worry about his sobriety.
Overall, the book is very similar to the first one. Adam is a wonderful, flawed character in an interesting universe. The big flaw, as with the first book, is that the supporting characters are more cardboard cutouts that fill a role than real people. The characters seem to exist solely to serve as plot functions in Adam’s story. The book manages to get by on an interesting main character and a decent plot. So I do recommend it. It’s a fun book in a series that has been compared to The Dresden Files. Mildly recommended.