The Demolished Man

Executive Summary: Part sci-fi, part detective novel, part thriller. I was a bit surprised I enjoyed this one so much.Full ReviewWhen this book was announced as the September Sword & Laser pick, my initial reaction was: “never heard of it”.The premise sounded interesting, and all of my friends who read it prior had given it a 5. Good sign. But it's 60 years old. It was in fact the first book to win the Hugo 60 years ago this year.I don't read a lot of classics. I've found most of the ones I've read boring. They often feel like a product of their time with paper thin characters, badly written woman (if they exist at all. I'm looking at you [b:Foundation 29579 Foundation (Foundation, #1) Isaac Asimov http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320416085s/29579.jpg 1783981]) , and a lot of ideas that seem ignorant to me. Some of those apply here.I'm sure 60 years from now, many of the things I read might seem the same way to kids born 30 years from now. The same discussion threads about these points seems to come up every time we read one.None of that really matters to me. The thing I like about being in a book club like Sword & Laser is to read things I might not have otherwise. Some selections are hit and others miss.This one was a hit for me. Personally, I can see why this was selected as a Hugo winner. I can't say I have (or will) read the other nominees from that year, but this one was a lot of fun for me.It's more thriller or detective novel than sci-fi. A lot of older works I've read are more focused on some cool sci-fi idea and less so on the story. This one was the opposite. It was a cool story with a sci-fi premise.The idea of telepaths being everywhere sets an interesting backdrop to the question of “Can you get away with murder when the police can read your mind?”The protagonist and antagonist I thought were both pretty well developed even if the supporting cast wasn't so much. Then again this a 250 page story, so you can't expect that much depth of character.The last quarter or so of the book bumped the rating up for me. The pace picked up and I really wanted to find out what happened next.The last chapter wrapped things up nicely, which was nice because the penultimate chapter got rather surreal and confused the hell out of me, but just had me turning the page to find out what happens next.3.5 Stars.