History Literature / BlackMan

But when a ship headed from Mars to a [[SpaceElevator nanorack]] on the Pacific Rim instead splashes down in the ocean, the crew apparently [[ImAHumanitarian eaten]] by a stowaway, the ugly truth rears its head: nobody catches renegade thirteens better than [[RecruitingTheCriminal other thirteens]]. And there's one that makes his living exactly doing that...

* YouHaveNoIdeaWhoYoureDealingWith: Explored in the context of true HumanSubspecies; what make the thirteens so awesome and terrifying is that they are not ''super''human but ''other''human. It is ''abnormal'' for baseline humans to be {{Unfettered}} {{Sociopath}}ic {{Badass}}es, and the process of developing those traits ''damages'' humans in [[ShellShockedVeteran predictable]] ways. Thirteens have those traits from birth, and have to ''learn'' to follow laws, recognize the rights of others, and deal with situations by means other than violence. This makes dealing with them a ''nightmare'' because where damaged humans have [[SanityHasAdvantages diminished capacity]], on-mission thirteens are firing on all cylinders.

In the future, humans toyed with a wide array of genetic experimentation to create different kinds of human, to be used for specific forms of labour - servants, soldiers, number crunchers. Each of them tapped into specific human traits, amplifying them at the expense of the others. The most problematic of the bunch? "Variant thirteen", a hypermasculine male variant, a genetic throwback to the eponymous hunters of the hunter-gatherer era, bred out through lack of necessity. Useful in times of war, in peacetime (or during colder wars) thirteens are dangerous, unstable and for that, socially ostracized. These days, they're mostly used as workforce in the terraforming of Mars...

* ImColdSoCold: Played with. Ertekin makes a DeathbedConfession that she'd planned to murder a police colleague who'd betrayed her genetically-engineered husband to the authorities, but she lacked the ruthlessness to carry it through. "You have to be cold, so cold..."

* ShootTheDog: An InvokedTrope when Ertekin gets Marsalis [[spoiler:to MercyKill her because he'll feel less guilty about it than her father or her colleague Tom Norton.]]

* ClusterFBomb: Thirteens in general, and Marsalis in particular, are fond of swearing up a storm when riled. And most of them are easily riled.
** Not only thirteens. Ertekin and even Norton do their part as well, not to mention the various criminals. Basically, every main character of the novel and most secondary ones swear like there's no tomorrow.

* CryonicsFailure: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in great detail during the initial investigation of the crash landing of ''Horkan's Pride''.

%%* DiscOneFinalBoss: Merrin.

** The nature of the Haag Gun, which even leads Marsalis to MercyKill people he doesn't kill in one shot. [[spoiler: it's basically an AIDS gun.]] The sheer nastiness of it is justified, since it's used to [[spoiler: guarantee the death of any renegade thirteen if they escape before thirteen-hunters like Marsalis can finish the job.]]
** The novel opens with a ''Horkan's Pride'' passenger who's been woken from cryo-sleep to find herself StrappedToAnOperatingTable and surgically dissected so she can be EatenAlive.

''Black Man'' (U.S. title ''Thirteen'') is a sci-fi mystery novel from Creator/RichardKMorgan that feels like a StealthPrequel to the ''Literature/TakeshiKovacs'' series.

* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler: Jacob]]. Going against Carl Marsilas with a machete? That's about as stupid as it gets.

* PostHumousCharacter: Played with. Elena Aguirre is used as one for one-sided DeadPersonConversation purposes, but Marsalis's mind simply latched on to her face when his CryonicsFailure marooned him in space, he never met her after she was [[HumanPopsicle thawed]] on Earth, and she may be alive and well elsewhere for all he knows.

** To another book by the same author. Somewhere in ''Black Man'' there's a random mention of market forces, which will immediately jump out as an unlikely coincidence to anyone who knows about [[RichardKMorgan Richard Morgan's bibliography]].

* [[spoiler: BolivianArmyEnding]]

* [[spoiler: [[DiscOneFinalBoss Decoy Antagonist]]]]: Merrin.

** The factory raft Marsalis and Rovayo visit is called ''[[TheMasterAndMargarita Bulgakov's Cat]]''.

* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler:When Tom Norton finds out his own brother is behind everything, he stops Carl from killing him, but then confesses that he slept with Tom's wife, and implies he'll continue doing so while his brother is serving his long prison sentence. It works too well as his brother is DrivenToSuicide.]]

* ItsPersonal: Onbekend's EvilPlan would have worked, [[spoiler:but he gets pissed when Marsalis intimidates his girlfriend and goes after him (at the time Marsalis doesn't even know that Onbekend exits). This results in Ertekin getting killed, so now Marsalis and Norton want revenge. They keep digging and uncover the whole conspiracy.]]

* KillAndReplace: [[spoiler:No-one can figure out how Merrin got away from the crash before the response team arrived. Until a weighed-down body is found under the sea, and they're belatedly informed that a member of the response team has been missing for some time.]]

* GambitPileup:

* {{Irony}}: thirteens, the genetic throwbacks to the hunter-gatherers who were forced out of humanity's gene-pool by the weak (weak from a thirteen's viewpoint) farmers, are all shipped off to Mars to do what? {{Terraforming}}, which is the sci-fi equivalent of going into the desert and trying to plant a tree.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Marsalis, the 'black man' of the title, is told the .357 Magnum round was specifically developed against cocaine-fueled black men, the 'urban monster' of the time. That round was actually developed in TheThirties, in response to gangsters equipped with automatic weapons and bulletproof vests.

* ItsPersonal: Onbekend's EvilPlan would have worked, [[spoiler:but he gets pissed when Marsalis intimidates his girlfriend and goes after him (at the time Marsalis doesn't even know that Onbekend exits). This results in Ertekin getting killed, so now Marsalis and Norton want revenge. They keep digging and uncover the whole conspiracy.]]

* KickTheSonOfABitch: [[spoiler:When Tom Norton finds out his own brother is behind everything, he stops Carl from killing him, but then confesses that he slept with Tom's wife, and implies he'll continue doing so while his brother is serving his long prison sentence. It works too well as his brother is DrivenToSuicide.]]

* TestosteronePoisoning: Comes with the territory with all Thirteens. [[spoiler:Carmen Ren is an attempt to avert the harmful aspects of this trope, by creating a female Variant 13.]]
* ThickerThanWater: An InvokedTrope by Onbekend [[spoiler:who's formed an alliance with a gangster who's his blood relative. When the gangster finds out Onbekend has used his twin brother as a patsy, he's ''not'' happy.]]

* NotSoDifferent: Merrin and Marsalis get compared a lot by other characters, and not just because they're thirteens that both [[spoiler: suffered CryonicsFailure on their trip from Mars]]. Marsalis also takes offense at attempts to compare him to any other thirteen in general.

* TestosteronePoisoning: Comes with the territory with all Thirteens. [[spoiler:Carmen Ren is an attempt to avert the harmful aspects of this trope, by creating a female Variant 13.]]

* AndIMustScream: What Marsalis does to [[spoiler:Amy Westhoff]]. Shoots her with a neurotoxin tipped dart, calmly informs her that it will paralyse her skeletal muscle system so she can't run, her lungs so she can't breathe or call for help, that she has about eight minutes to live, and leaves her to it. Turns out he's pretty mean when killing for revenge instead of for work or necessity.

** To another book by the same author. Somewhere in ''Black Man'' there's a random mention of market forces, which will clearly jump out as an unlikely coincidence to anyone who knows about [[RichardKMorgan Richard Morgan's bibliography]].

** The [[SpaceElevator nanorack]] names include [[CarlSagan Sagan]] and Kaku (as in Michio Kaku).