A detective mystery that happens on a luxury cruise (space) ship on the way to Mars. It is a kind of homage to the Thin Man movie series from the late '30s-early '40s. A billionaire woman is on her honeymoon with her new husband, Shal, who apparently used to be a detective. The woman, Tesla Crane, is traveling incognito. She has her cute service dog with her, as she tends to have PTSD flashbacks from a serious accident she had in the past. She suffered a severe back injury and needs deep brain stimulation to ease the pain it causes her. One night, as they return to their cabin, they find a man who is dying from a knife wound. Shal starts to chase the suspect but is unable to catch him/her and soon ends up becoming a suspect himself. So Tesla must find the real suspect to exonerate her husband and, eventually, herself too. A very light, but really slow-paced book. Tesla goes from one place to another and uses her immeasurable entitlement (she is a personification of the “I want to talk to the manager” meme). The cruise security personnel is stupid beyond belief (well, it turns out there is a reason of sorts for that) and the ending seems almost invented while writing some very stupid details. The spaceship is such a powerful Faraday cage that it stops electronic signals INSIDE it (?). It is possible to kill someone by throwing acupuncture needles... I really don’t buy it. The cruise ship has good fingerprinting capabilities but no DNA analysis whatsoever (and apparently DNA analysis did not exist in this world, as the “cunning” plot of the murderer would have instantly fallen apart with the simplest genetic testing). A pretty stupid book with an irritating central character whose husband is mostly a sex object. The writing was pretty good though.
384 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment