Taking its place in the first wave of Black Library’s Warhammer Crime releases (alongside Chris Wraight’s Bloodlines and Alec Worley’s Dredge Runners), short story anthology No Good Men explores some of the different ways in which Imperial justice is loosely interpreted on the mean streets of Varangantua. Eschewing the usual battlefields and familiar tabletop characters in favour of ordinary citizens simply trying to survive the brutal realities of Imperial life, these stories all explore Varangantua’s atmospheric, cyberpunk-esque stylings and the towering inequalities corroding the heart of the Imperium. As the title suggests, there are no heroics here – just regular people doing what it takes to get by, whether that falls within the remit of the law or not.
Continuing Black Library’s recent push to broaden out beyond military SFF (see Warhammer Horror), these are all low-key, character-driven stories, heavy on atmosphere and relaxed, informal dialogue that makes a nice change from high-octane action. Rooted in typically 40k themes of crushing inequality, ignorance, desperation, vicious political maneuvering and the impossibility of ever really making a noticeable difference, they variously feature illicit trading and desperate measures to meet quotas, the lurking xenos menace and what it means to regular Imperial citizens, long-buried family secrets, serial killer psychology, missing persons, assassinations and plenty more. Two clearly link out to other tales (Bloodlines and the upcoming Flesh and Steel), either introducing or reinforcing their respective protagonists, while the remaining five all introduce new names, and on the basis of these stories there’s definitely scope for more with at least some of these characters.
While some of these might fit happily in a ‘regular’ 40k anthology, overall there are enough crime stylings here to lend proceedings an enjoyably different tone to usual, not to mention the powerful presence of Varangantua running through the whole collection. The short story format obviously means that there’s only limited scope for really exploring ideas and characters, but these all err on the longer side as BL short stories go (Kyme’s Against the Grain isn’t that far off novella-length), while the shared setting allows for certain common themes and concepts to be reinforced across the collection. Whether written by BL veteran (Guy Haley, Darius Hinks, Nick Kyme, Graham McNeill, Chris Wraight) or relative newcomer (Cold Cases is Marc Collins’ fourth BL story, The View From Olympus Gareth Hanrahan’s second) there’s lots to enjoy in all of these stories, and individually speaking they all suggest that the Warhammer Crime imprint could develop into something very interesting indeed.
Taken as a whole, however, this anthology is somewhat let down by a lack of variety, in a couple of ways. Firstly, and rather ironically given the title, it’s notable that not only are all seven stories written by men, but all seven feature male protagonists – on an individual story basis that combination is obviously not a problem, but taken as a whole it’s odd, and a little disappointing, to limit the range of voices in this way. Given that the Warhammer Crime imprint appears to be aimed (at least partially) at broadening Black Library’s readership beyond the standard sci-fi/fantasy audience, it seems like a misstep to so noticeably avoid anything in the way of non-male representation beyond a handful of secondary characters.
Secondly, of the seven stories all but one feature your typical grizzled, slightly beaten-down detective as their protagonist – whether official Varangantuan probators or informal freelancers – with only Hinks’ Exit Wound offering up something different with its violent, less-than-legal problem solver. There’s nothing wrong with leaning on classic crime tropes, of course, and once again if you look at these stories individually the characters all prove engaging and interesting despite (or quite possibly because of) the familiarities. Looking at the anthology as a whole though, it would have been nice to have seen a bit more variety. Perhaps in an attempt to really drill down into the richness of the ‘domestic 40k’ setting, this just somewhat lost sight of the (even greater) richness of the possibilities available in crime fiction.
If the goal for this anthology was simply to tell entertaining, low-key 40k stories for existing Black Library fans then, from the perspective of individual story enjoyment at least, you can call it a success (each of the authors featured here should certainly be happy with the standard of their contributions overall). The blend of crime and 40k is clearly an effective one, and if this imprint follows a similar trajectory to Warhammer Horror and gradually moves towards a higher crime-to-Warhammer ratio, then hopefully this is just the start of something very interesting indeed. If BL really wants Warhammer Crime to appeal to the wider crime-reading audience, however, they surely need to inject a little more variety – not to mention representation – into future anthologies.
