Black Man

Black Man is a science fiction novel by the British author Richard Morgan, published in 2007 and released in North America as Thirteen. It won the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Carl Marsalis is one of the Thirteen, genetically engineered alpha males designed to fight the century's wars at a time when the fighting was done by people bred for it. That design makes them dangerous to have around in peacetime, and many of them have left Earth for Mars. Carl is in a Florida jail for financing an illegal abortion, beyond the reach of the United Nations, when the American police contact him with an offer: help find a man who has returned from Mars and is now, apparently, responsible for a string of killings across the country. The novel follows his pursuit of a version of himself, and its interest is in what happens to a person built as a weapon once somebody decides the weapon is a problem to be solved.

Morgan writes science fiction as crime fiction, and the novel's politics are argued out through violence, prejudice and the mechanics of a police investigation.