A book from the “Retrieval Artist”-series. A former cop Miles Flint is now a retrieval artist. His job is to find the “disappeared” who have escaped to avoid (usually) alien justice. His job isn’t to find them to bring them to justice, but find them if they don’t have to hide anymore or if there is some sort of family emergency or other such situation. There are also “trackers” who act as bounty hunters and try to catch the disappeared and bring them to justice.
During the biggest sporting event of the moon, the annual marathon one contestant is found dead on the track. That as such wouldn’t be extremely unusual – there have been casualties before – but the police officer and former work partner of Miles Flint soon discovers that the death wasn’t natural. Someone has committed a murder and tried to cover it by passing it as an accident.
At the same time, a tracker is working undercover as a voluntary helper in the marathon and is trying to find an especially notorious criminal who might be taking part to the event.
Meanwhile Miles Flint gets a strange job offer from a very prestigious law firm, which usually employs its own retrieval artists. Why doesn't the firm want to – or can - use its’ own assets?
The three separate threads run through the book and slowly intertwine more and more. The beginning of the book was fairly slow and it took some time get going, but action intensified all the time towards to the end to almost catastrophic proportions. One of the better science fiction detective stories I have read. The writing was enjoyable and the plot (after it really started) was exiting and the characters were well drawn and above all, they weren’t stupid.
388 pp.
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