The Cause of Death

Hey, it's hard to write Science Fiction mysteries. Very few authors can pull it off. I remember reading an old Larry Niven novel about a murder on the moon. It was one of his worst books. So, you have to hand it to MacBride for daring to leap into this arena. I have read a couple of other of MacBride's books over the years, with "Ring of Charon" standing out in my mind as a fairly decent novel. I was intrigued with his new book, the first in an obvious series, about a couple of futuristic FBI Agents handling crimes committed by Earthlings on other planets. The book is really two mysteries, wrapped into one. This does cause a bit of confusion and makes the plot rather uneven, but not fatally so. The first mystery is not so much a mystery as a plot contrivance. How do you charge someone for murder if committing the murder is acceptable under the law? I found that conundrum to be very interesting and I wished the author had stuck with that plot line a bit further. Instead, about half way through the book, an actual murder occurs and the book turns into an Agatha Christie novel. This is not a bad thing, by the way, but it did cause me as a reader to change my understanding of the novel. It also disappointed me that the actual murderer was a bit too easy to deduce, although the method of the crime was quite clever. I look forward to reading other novels in this "series". This may be one of the few times that writing a series may actually be worth the effort, unlike most of the neverending novels that appear on the bookshelves these days.

In the far distant future when various races have colonized the stars, the BSI was formed to deal with human involvement in criminal cases outside the homeworld system. Agents Hannah Wolfson and Jamie Mendez are sent to Reqwar, one of the worlds colonized by the Pavlat, to escort a prisoner home. When they arrive there, they are greeted by troops who want to kill them; they barely make it to the surface alive. An official tells them they were not sent to escort George home, but to observe his execution. His crime is that he refused to kill his adopted father Thelm Lantrall, the leader of the world. When a murder occurs, various alien races must work together to solve the homicide before civil war explodes. The planet Reqwar and its inhabitants are described in colorful vivid detail so that the audience can easily visualize the planet and its occupants though that also slows down an exciting science fiction murder mystery. Fans of outer space police procedurals will enjoy Roger MacBride Allen's fine thriller containing realistic enigmatic alien races and two superb human cops struggling to deal with unfamiliar cultures in which the definition of what is a crime differ. Harriet Klausner