Ben H. Winters has established a niche for himself with noir-inflected mysteries that take place in speculative realities, such as Underground Airlines and The Last Policeman. In Golden State, Winters continues in this vein, setting his novel in an alternate or possibly future society where the state of California has become a separate nation known as the Golden State. The rest of the former United States has undergone an unknown disaster, seemingly related to the spread of misinformation and the erosion of objective truth. In response, the Golden State has instituted constant surveillance and rigid adherence to collectively understood facts referred to as Objectively So.
Protagonist Laszlo Ratesic is a veteran Speculator, a type of law enforcement officer committed to prosecuting lies and untruths in all their forms. In addition to unspecified extrasensory perception that allows him to sniff out lies halfway across a room, Ratesic and others in the Speculative Service are allowed to consider multiple possible scenarios in pursuit of their investigations. In other words, to speculate. Ratesic's emotional life belies his professional success; he struggles with feelings he still holds for his ex-wife, and he lives in the shadow of his brother, a genius Speculator killed in the line of duty. When Ratesic is assigned a young, talented partner, he finds himself shaken out of his lonely routine and on the trail of a suspicious death that leads to a larger conspiracy.
In many ways, Golden State is a reflection on contemporary preoccupations about fake news and alternative facts. In one passage, Ratesic struggles to picture a society without the Objectively So:
"Because just imagine--just imagine the alternative, the world in which a man encounters some scrap of information, about the murder rate in his neighborhood, or about the presence of troops on the northern border, or what time the bus is supposed to come... and then the next hour or the next day he hears something different, and it is impossible, literally impossible, to know which version is the real one. Madness creeps in very quickly at the edges of such speculation."
However, the downsides of the Golden State are readily apparent. Any form of fiction or untruth, no matter how minor, is proscribed, including the utterances of the mentally ill. Those found in violation are exiled to the unknown world outside the nation's borders. The Golden State recalls 1984 in its emphasis on surveillance, obsessive record-keeping and bureaucracy, although the sunshine and acres of marijuana fields make Winters's vision considerably more attractive.
Winters is an expert at combining social commentary with gripping mystery plots, and the novel never slows down enough to be accused of didacticism. With rich characters, frequent twists and tense set pieces, Winters always nails the hardboiled basics. And even as Ratesic's unquestioning faith in his society erodes, it remains a provocative and compelling alternative to the uncertainty that can seem to undergird modern life. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.
Shelf Talker: Golden State sets its satisfying mystery plot in a speculative version of California where falsehoods are considered the greatest threat to public safety.