MURDER ON THE INTERSTELLAR EXPRESS

A snarky heroine must play detective in Little’s space-bound whodunit.

Bellerophona Beauregard didn’t expect to actually get sentenced in court after being accused of inadvertently rendering her community vulnerable to an alien invasion; she definitely didn’t anticipate being consigned to a lifetime of indentured servitude on a passenger ship leaving her home planet of Anaranjado. But mere seconds after the decision is handed down, Bell is knocked out while trying to escape and wakes up on the spacecraft 22 years later from cryosleep to a voice telling her it’s time to get to work. The ship’s glitchy consciousness, which Bell names “Loopy” (“I am currently suffering from numerous quirks”), explains that crew members are awakened at odd intervals to perform tasks and repairs in order to keep everything in tip-top shape for the passengers. Bell doesn’t even get a chance to meet all of the other eight conscious crew members before the ship informs them that there has been a murder on board. The ship, having malfunctioned (again), can’t tell them who did it, and everyone suspects everyone else. But later, Loopy sends a private message informing her that he knows her to be innocent and is putting her in charge of the investigation to solve the case. Of course, she can’t tell anyone, because then she would be a target herself. With a cast of quirky characters ranging from a fully robotic monk to an alien creature made up of sentient worms working in concert, Little has crafted one crazy mystery. Two elements make this novel stand out in a crowded field of space thrillers: the truly fascinating, if not outright weird, aliens, enhancements, and strange beings that inhabit the world depicted in these pages; and the disorienting twists and turns the author throws in to keep Bell and the readers off the trail of the killer. The story may feel like it’s getting a little too deep in the weeds with of all the complex maneuvering the author has done, but mystery buffs and SF fans alike will find a lot to enjoy here.

A complex, tightly woven space mystery that will keep readers guessing until the very end.