Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding Job for a First Novel!!!
Review: Matz creates a truly fascinating and original protagonist, while placing him in a believable future world. I especially liked the way the character's background and the facts about the society he lives in emerged bit by bit in the course of the story; no long bouts of dull exposition here! I sincerely hope to see a lot more, both of the character Robie and from his creator, Matz. This guy is someone to watch.
Rating:
Summary: A Thoughtful SF Thriller.
Review: Not exactly what I expected from the front cover art and back cover description. This book is more like what I get from someone like John Le Carre -- the why of people's actions are as important as how they do it. The SF side of the novel is kind of quiet, not a lot of cyber-dazzle or "magic" tech, but it's impressive how smoothly Matz fits it into his world - he must have read his Heinlein. Nocturne was a pleasant suprise of a read, worth 5 stars for the classy style alone. Should be on the the SF/Action readers read list.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the hard science fiction and/or action fan
Review: One of the best sci-fi novels that I have read this year. I stumbled across it in my local bookstore and gave it a try in spite of the comic book cover. I discovered much to my surprise that it was an amazingly well developed character study of a man who had seen too much of the dark side of life but continued on nevertheless. I very much enjoyed reading the musings of the of a philosopher in action. The ideas are well developed and the future is entirely too realistic. Good plot. Intricate requires some intelligence to follow. Great first novel. Pleasant change from all the sword and sorcery repeats.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best
Review: One of the best sci-fi novels that I have read this year. I stumbled across it in my local bookstore and gave it a try in spite of the comic book cover. I discovered much to my surprise that it was an amazingly well developed character study of a man who had seen too much of the dark side of life but continued on nevertheless. I very much enjoyed reading the musings of the of a philosopher in action. The ideas are well developed and the future is entirely too realistic. Good plot. Intricate requires some intelligence to follow. Great first novel. Pleasant change from all the sword and sorcery repeats.
Rating:
Summary: A rich tapestry
Review: Reading this book makes me want to describe it in more poetic or evocative language than I usually use. The villains evoke the Greek Furies, but to describe the book as a whole I would evoke the Fates who spun the lives of men. Nocturne is a rich tapestry with threads of many lives. I might nickname it The Webs of a Life. The phrase "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows" also comes strongly to mind, but that has already been used as an SF title. The hero, Gavilan, is a true paladin living in a world 50 years from now. He makes his living recovering stolen art, but his life is rescuing people. The events in the novel take less than 10 days, but Gavilan's ghosts and flashbacks span 30 years of rescues and family memories cover over 100 years.The plot can be described simply: a brilliant young scientist is kidnapped by terrorists, and Gavilan is convinced to try to rescue her before a 10-day ransom deadline. The characters and the book are not simple, they are deep and rich. The terrorists are misguided idealists. Gavilan is a musician, an art lover, and a deadly unarmed combat expert with strong ethical principles against killing. His actions are always aimed at preserving lives, even those of his opponents, not taking lives, but his actions are not always gentle. (Don't let the cover mislead you--Gavilan does not carry a gun, but he is indeed dangerous.) The world in Nocturne is very lived-in. There are no expository lumps to describe gee-whiz changes to the reader, but there are many changes from our world present in the background. I can recommend this book to anyone who likes science fiction, music, art, martial arts, daring rescues, loving relationships, haunted heroes, strong ethics, believable futures and many other threads woven into a rich whole.
Rating:
Summary: what we have here is a failure to execute good ideas
Review: Sorry, this book frustrated me. The protagonist is extremely eclectic and I found him sympathetic and interesting. Wonderful characters briefly pop into the story then totally disappear. HOWEVER!! By the time I was finished reading it, I was STARVED for some real motivations... for some "Why are these people doing what they do".... The author puts truly interesting people on his stage but just gives you a teeny... weenie... taste of them.... this left me.. very unsatisfied.... None of the relationships between Robie and other characters were satisfactorily given breath, flesh or bone... I honestly felt like the author was trying to cram 50lbs of swell concepts into a 2lb bag and which left no room for anything but a sketchy outline or maybe ONE cool scene. sorry, even the cover art totally.... stunk... comic books have better art on the cover. Obviously the artist didn't read the book. I was really unhappy I purchased this one. Good ideas .... the author just didn't take them far enough in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry I just had to mention....
Review: The way the author left pronouns off his sentences.... like... "Went out the door" Was insulting.... it didn't make it sound like the voice over on a 1940's detective movie... it made it sound like Mr. Matz needs an english class. It just came across as shoddy, not noirish.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful--grabs your emotions. Richly textured characters
Review: This book is like a combination of the best of early Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon. The action is gripping with dramatic tension (it is a thriller!), but the characters are also fascinating and varied. No cardboard heroes or villains here. Shades of gray are very evident. Set in a future 50 years from now, suffering from ecological consequences to human greed. The protagonist (Gavilan Robie) is Scottish, Basque, and American Indian, a master cellist, a former member of the Action Rescue Committe (freeing political prisoners at great personal risk), skilled at a wide variety of martial arts, multilingual, and making a living from recovering fine art (that has been stolen). He also, sometimes, tries to find people who have been kidnapped. Matz does an excellent job of exploring Robie's psyche and world while keeping the reader's tension high. (The kidnapped victim--a brilliant woman who may be the 21st century's Leonardo da Vinci--is slated to die in a week.) I particularly liked that Robie is complex. In some ways, he can be quite nasty (he'll use bribery, blackmail, and physical violence if necessary), yet he is amazingly compassionate and holds to a clear set of ethical values. Even the "minor" characters in Nocturne for a Dangerous Man have stories to tell. I saw that Nocturne got rave reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly. I think they are well deserved. This is a new author and I'll be watching for his work in the future. Buy this book--you'll be powerfully moved by it!
Rating:
Summary: Not for the hard science fiction and/or action fan
Review: This is a good book if you like detective work. However, to be honest, I had been expecting some harder science fiction and more action. There were a number of potentially interesting items that I wished that the author would have given more details for. For instance, a better description of the automated driving function in the characters truck, or the "wedge" that could possibly take out the door and a potential attacker with it. In one point in the book the character says something to the effect of "I didn't go for the purse. Bio-keyed, remember?", uh, no, not really. Yes, he did mention the term "bio-key" before and I can take a good guess as to what it is, but how does the thing work? Instantaneous DNA sampling from skin tissue? Sensing biological energy patterns of some sort? Of course, it may not be too important to the storyline, but I think it would help the reader to better "experience" the plot instead of just "reading" it. The main character is quite interesting and is quite an intelligent and capable one, however, I found the character, who is the one telling the story for the most part, to be too "talkative" and quite cocky. To be honest, this grated on my nerves. The character tries to show a weak side to his personality at times, but it just didn't come through. As if he were saying it but underneath, knowing that he can "kick the guy in the" you know where.
Someone mentioned something to the effect of "two pages of action". That's about the gist of it. I'm guessing that the author tried to make the action scenes exciting and show how everything was happening so fast, but I found his style to be a bit sloppy and found myself re-reading paragraphs to figure out how the character got from point A to point B.
I barely got through the book. The only thing that got me going was to convince myself that I paid for the book and that there's bound to be an end worth waiting for. This book was not for me, but I'm sure that some people will find the author's style to their liking.
Rating:
Summary: An Infuriating Novel
Review: This is a novel of a near-future Earth that has suffered some significant damage resulting from climatic changes. As a result, some countries have been devastated by rising sea levels, but most have managed to adjust. Multinational corporations are extremely powerful (as they are today), and some nations have vanished while new ones have risen. Many important technological advances have been made, and there are plenty of improved or new gizmos and gadgets. Initially, I thought this would be a case of "Neuromancer Lite", but sadly, not even that limited expectation was met. The setting was all right, but the kidnapping plot became unduly byzantine (by the end, the question is not who is involved, but who isn't involved, as seemingly every party has a stake in the affair). It's never even satisfactorily explained why the particular victim was chosen by the primary culprits. The real flaw, though, is the protagonist, Gavilan Robie. He's part Scots, part Basque, part Cheyenne, part Breton, skillfully plays a 400-year-old Guarneri cello, is an expert on the arts with a Turner fetish, a master of all forms of unarmed combat, a great field medic, a wonderful cook, a wine connoseiur, a natural horseman, speaks 15 languages and several dialects, is rich, and of course, irresistible to women. One grandfather won the Victoria Cross. His mother was a fabulous actress. His father was a wealthy Scotsman who served in the British secret services before retiring and winning the Pulitzer Prize. Um...okay. (Admittedly, according to the blurb on the inside back cover, some of this is true of the author himself.) I guess I could take that much if it wasn't for the fact that each of his friends is equally fabulous. Every one of them has some arcane skill or is that master of their craft or the acknowledged leader in their field. Not only that, he can't encounter anyone, no matter how casually, without discovering that he is connected to their past because of some daring rescue of their relatives or loved ones in the past. For further insult, all of his magnificent buddies exist primarily to acknowledge his superior coolness in all ways. No matter how great they are, they either have to outright confess their worthless inferiority in the face of Robie's splendor, or suffer his silent assesment of their shortcomings and failings. Geez, I get it already--Robie is the most wonderfulest person that ever existed. You can stop bludgeoning me over the head with his sheer godliness! To paraphrase an Ebert movie review, I hated this book sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and page by page, until at last it was done and I could hate it in its entirety. The cover art is terrible, too.
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