I’m back. A new reading challenge, I’m being softer on myself this time, just 26 books in 2026, so one every two weeks and maybe a review. Oh plus audiobooks and a book club, so not that soft.

I’ve thrown in a few collected comic series this time, the first of which is The One Hand <pause> and The Six Fingers.

I fairly randomly chose this book just before Christmas. I got a special signed edition from Forbidden Planet, though I can’t make out the signatures, so it could have been signed by one of the staff there. But I did like the premise; noir, cyberpunk-ish and two different authors for two different series, hence the dramatic pause above!

Ram V is the writer for The One Hand, and it concerns a detective, almost ex, Ari Nasser. Ari has just retired, literally; he’s just had a slice of cake and been given a pocket watch. You don’t get more “just retired” than that. But a call comes in, a murder, using the same modus operandi as Ari’s most famous cases, “the one hand killer”, he solved this case twice, so of course, he’s going to pause retirement and go again.

Dan Watters is the writer for The Six Fingers. In this series, Johannes Vale is an archaeologist who thinks he’s committed a murder but doesn’t remember why or when, or much else, just visuals of blood, gore and guilt.

So how are these two series linked? Well, behind the scenes, Ram and Dan agreed on a structure and a world, along with specific events. But the meaning was up to each of them individually. They cleverly overlap the two stories, with subtle changes of perspective to see what Ari and Johannes make of common scenes.

The chapters, aka comics, are meant to be read in sequence, and that is how they were originally released, so you start off following Ari, then follow Johannes, but on the same timeline as Ari, so chapters 1 and 2 happen at the same time, as do chapters 3 and 4, etc.

One of the most interesting concepts is Cogs, not robots or synthetics, but humans conditioned to do simplistic tasks and much of the deeper ideas centre around this; in fact, much of the book poses the question: what do we become if we don’t have agency? Ari is a construct of order, and Johannes is a construct of industry. It is almost as if they are following a pre-programmed series of steps without control or choice. This becomes weirder and more unpleasant as it is explored.

It is hard to discuss more of the story without giving away spoilers. Like any decent detective novel, it would be wrong to give away the ending, but it has enough variation in it to excuse a few common tropes. I particularly liked the wall of runic symbols, written in the victim’s blood at the scene of each crime. There are also some familiar aspects of noir, especially in The One Hand, when compared to the ideas that seem deeper and more complex in The Six Fingers, but maybe the more regular first view really sets the second one apart - I’d like to think so. Whilst it doesn’t always hit the mark, there is enough unsettling imagery and words that will make this clever approach linger long in the memory.

Credit also to artists Laurence Campbell and Sumit Kumar for bringing this story to life, especially the internal thoughts that exploded (usually in red) onto the page from Johannes that I think Kumar expressed so well.

I gave it 8.0 out of 10.

TTRPG Thoughts

This is where I search for tabletop roleplaying game usage or source material.

This is, at its heart, a grizzled detective tracking down a serial killer; he’s got a partner and love interest, plus a boss who doesn’t rate him. So in theory, you could align it with Blade Runner; Ari as the Enforcer, his partner McCormac as the Analyst and Helene as the Doxie. The ten collected comics can be easily broken down into crime scenes, locations, and events, and there is a clear timeline that allows for the players and their target to come into contact. The timeline has events that increasingly make it more difficult for the detectives to operate.

The Cogs replace the Blade Runner world-building around synthetics, and they are much more nuanced, being essentially human, even if they are a lower class, as described in the comics. Does it turn Blade Runner into an entirely class-oriented RPG?

Another RPG that could work well with this setting is Hard City. Hard City is an Osprey RPG game from Nathan Russell. Nathan’s game favours the hard-boiled noir of the 1930s, but isn’t that essentially what Cyberpunk is? Hard City has fewer world settings to have to faff around with and simpler mechanics, so quite possibly an easier way to hack into Ram V and Dan Watters’ universe.