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Don't read further if you haven't finished the book or if you want to work out the ending for yourself. Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong, but these are the basic points of the mystery.

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Mary Hinchley, a Catholic whore from the Houses, is murdered during a botched snuff job, and her body washes up in the Bay.

The case falls to Detective Ryker. Kawahara, who runs the Houses, tries to buy him off, but Ryker is determined to solve the case. Kawahara has him framed and sent to the stacks.

Kawahara needs someone with UN influence to vote down Resolution 653, which would allow for Catholics like Hinckley to be temporarily resleeved in order to provide eyewitness testimony.

Kawahara's plan is to blackmail Laurens Bancroft, a client with considerable UN influence, into killing the Resolution.

In order to blackmail Bancroft, Kawahara convinces his wife to spike one of Bancroft's sleeves with a drug that will induce him to kill a House prostitute the next time he has sex. Bancroft, unaware of the drug, kills a prostitute (another Catholic). Kawahara assumes that Bancroft is now willing to kill Prop 653,

Bancroft is not.

He goes home from the Houses and commits suicide in order to destroy his stack and erase any memory of his crime.

At this point he hires Takeshi to figure out the mystery.

the book begins here.

Good summary! Whilst I really enjoyed the book, I did think it failed to pull together all the story threads cleanly, so it's good to see I got it right though ;)

Thank you for this!

Nice summary Chris. I couldn't have done it any better!

Great summary. One of my favorite reads in the past few months. I'll def be visiting it again soon.

This is one of my favourite books in the sci fi genre.Richard Morgan has a fantastic style of writing and I was gripped from the first chapter. An intelligent read.

Nicely put, Chris.

Kovacs was "hired" by Bancroft but he was also "setup" by Kawahara, who had multiple objectives in doing so!

Great book!

Yeah, I loved the setting, filled with great ideas and concepts, but the "investigation" was kinda ho-hum.

Thank you for this!

Thanks for the explanation, it is a pity that the author could not explain it so clearly!

That's awesome. I was running out of time on my audiobook loan from the library and listened to the end on a migraine so it didn't all click. I got most of it, but this really helps clarify things. You might want to consider editing Wikipedia's page and sticking this into that plot summary or at least a form of it as the plot is more of a universe overview / tech. setting.

Thank you! I have read this book twice, and I don't know if it's me not paying enough attention, or the author not plotting and writing clearly enough, but even after two readings and now have watched six episodes of the Netflix series, I was still having trouble figuring out how all the different characters and stories fit together. Maybe now I should read it again with this understanding in mind!

Patti wrote: "Thank you! I have read this book twice, and I don't know if it's me not paying enough attention, or the author not plotting and writing clearly enough, but even after two readings and now have watc..."

Don't try to match it with the netflix series as there are many differences.

Why did he commit suicide to erase his memory? After that he would approve the 653 and the truth would come out anyhow, wouldn't it?

Matteo wrote: "Why did he commit suicide to erase his memory? After that he would approve the 653 and the truth would come out anyhow, wouldn't it?"

Because he felt so guilty about what he'd done he couldn't live with the memory. Miriam says as much.

Does anyone have any ideas about what Kovacs was laughing about at the very end?

Thank you for this. I finished it and had at some point completely lost the conclusion, and several plot points!

As this is one of my favorite books, I have read it probably close to 15-20 times. A brilliant piece of Sci-Fi, even if it does get a bit deep and convoluted at times.

Thank you for this!

Bigmouth wrote: "Matteo wrote: "Why did he commit suicide to erase his memory? After that he would approve the 653 and the truth would come out anyhow, wouldn't it?"

Because he felt so guilty about what he'd done ..."

I'm assuming that you are talking about Bancroft? If so, he committed suicide which included melting his Cortical stack to slag, because he was infected with a virus. Had he not destroyed his stack, the virus would have been backed up at the 48 hour interval, thus infecting his backup as well. Not sure why they don't have redundant backups though.

He wasn't infected with the virus, that was the fake story that Kovacs comes up with to appease Kawahara.
Bancroft killed himself because of the guilt of killing the prostitute. Kawahara forced Bancroft to kill her by having his clone drugged before a UN meeting, thereby hoping that Bancroft would vote down Resolution 453.

You are correct on that. I realized it about a week later and didn't get time to rescind my faux pa. And... wasn't it Resolution 653? As much as we read these days, it is so easy to mix things up, lol!

Chris wrote: "..."

Thank you, thank you, thank you Chris! Just finished the book and have been scratching my head a bit. Your concise summary sums it up!

Although. If anyone can still help answer:

How were the dusty fingerprints on Bancroft's telescope important?

Got loads of other questions, but, I'm sleepy. Just finished the book at 2:34am.

The television series was outstanding. Reading the book and watching the series helped me understand this story better.
'
Read the entire book series! Mind-blowing!

My problem/question is.....What is Reileen Kawahara's plan after Bancroft kills himself? Doesn't this mean she drugged him and had him kill a prostitute for nothing? If she doesn't want/need him to remember what happened how can she blackmail him as was her original plan? She seems much too smart to waste her time in this way and not have figured out a new angle....

Jamurai wrote: "My problem"

Hi. From what I remember, she did not want him to kill himself. Dude surprised her by himself erasing his memory of the incident and I think she was even more surprised to learn he had actually tried to wipe ALL his life's memories (effectively killing himself totally). She figured he was a Meth and Meth's just like living so much.

But then why does she try so hard to keep him from remembering? She has all the physical evidence I am sure to remind him and blackmail him as was her plan and Miriam's help to convince him. As far as I know he never tried to erase all his memories. In fact he tells Kovacs that if that had been his intention to really real-death himself and all his copies he would have done it more effectively. One of the reasons he was so sure he hadn't killed himself.

Jamurai wrote: "But then"

I do think she tried to NOT the let new clone of Bancroft know the truth (the one with no memory of being drugged and him murdering the prostitute) because the new clone is essentially a different person from the Bancroft that killed the prostitute when he was under the influence.

These are 2 different Bancrofts: the killer guilt-ridden easily manipulated Bancroft and the new angry Bancroft who has never killed anyone in his life. If Nawahara told the new Bancroft about what the previous Bancroft had done, the impact would just not have been the same: the new Bancroft was NOT the one that committed the murder. And, he probably would have gone to the cops who would have investigated further and found that Nawahara was actually the one who drugged the previous Bancroft and made him violent.

I think Nawahara realised her plan just wouldn't have the impact she had hoped it would have, hence she probably trying to stop the new Bancroft from knowing the truth. Yeah, she had the physical evidence and all, but, the truth is that the previous drugged violent killing Bancroft had committed suicide. He's gone, and there was no bringing him back. You can't blackmail someone for what their clone did.

I'm mostly speculating here by now though, would probably need to read the book again 😅

Meanwhile, the previous Bancroft did try to kill himself completely. He tried to first to destroy all copies of memory so that no new clone of his could be brought to life. When that didn't work, the depressed guilt-ridden man shot himself in the head. At least he'll be at peace.

Jamurai wrote: "My problem/question is.....What is Reileen Kawahara's plan after Bancroft kills himself? Doesn't this mean she drugged him and had him kill a prostitute for nothing? If she doesn't want/need him to..."

Yes, that's the most confusing part. It seems that Kawahara just let Bancroft go and dropped the blackmail plan.

Gbolahan wrote: "Although. If anyone can still help answer:

How were the dusty fingerprints on Bancroft's telescope important?

Got loads of other questions, but, I'm sleepy. Just finished the book at 2:34am."

If I'm not mistaken, the telescope's fingerprints indicated the last used configuration of the telescope, which was the whorehouse where everything went down. I guess it was to give Kovacs a connection between Bancroft and Head in the Clouds, presuming he viewed it before slagging his stack.

Marcin wrote: "Jamurai wrote: "My problem/question is.....What is Reileen Kawahara's plan after Bancroft kills himself? Doesn't this mean she drugged him and had him kill a prostitute for nothing? If she doesn't ..."

If I'm not mistaken, they had recordings of him killing the prostitute so they could have blackmailed him still. I don't think they expected him to kill himself however, which may have given him a degree of separation from the crime since the version of him who committed it was now dead. It was an isolated incident after all, so I think it was just Meth culture being odd

I felt like it wrapped up rather nicely, all things considered. Still, the explanation you give is very concise and concentric! Well Done!