This is a collection of three stories. It is funny to read a detective story set in the science fiction world. A nice afterword by Mr. Niven explains this and more. Mr Hamilton is an agent for Amalgamated Regional Militias (ARM, of course). But, in an interesting oddity, he lost an arm in an accident and gained an ethereal arm (psychokinetic), as well as a replacement from some dead person. 'Death by Ecstasy' is a future...
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I loved this book! It's actually a collection of three stories centered around ARM (Amalgamation of Regional Militia) agent Gilbert Gilgamesh Hamilton (Gil The Arm). Born in Topeka, Kansas, to Flatlander parents near the end of the 21st century, he emigrates to the Belt as soon as he becomes an adult. There he begins work on an arduous ten year apprenticeship towards the acquisition of his singleship licence. During...
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I read this book years ago and have ever after searched to find this kind of cleverness. What we have here are locked door mysteries set in the future. An ARM (Amalgamated Regional Militia), the police force of the United Nations, detective named Gil Hamilton solves mysteries that seem unsolvable. The extra added is that Gil , who lost an arm in a space accident was given a new arm, but comes to find that his lost arm is...
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Good mysteries are very hard to write. The puzzle is either too simple and the reader solves it long before the story ends, or the puzzle is too hard and the reader ends up feeling cheated. Finding the right balance is hard, which is why so many mysteries are unreadable, formula-driven hack jobs. Trying to write a good mystery in a science fiction setting is even harder because the background sociology, technology, history,...
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Gil "the arm" Hamilton, named so because of his prosthetic arm, and the strange telekinetic ability he has that was developed after he lost his real arm and before the replacement, is a detective for ARM, the United Nations police force. The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton is a few stories of deduction and logic involving weird technologies, monstrous crimes as well as equally monstrous punishments in a world obsessed with staying...
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