THE POTENCY OF UNGOVERNABLE IMPULSES

A poison-pen campaign turns deadly in Older’s third volume transplanting the classic British mystery to the atmosphere of Jupiter.

Investigator Mossa is sunk deep in melancholia and pulling away from her sometimes-investigative partner and lover, Classical scholar Pleiti of Valdegeld University. In a plot motivator sampled from Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night, Pleiti’s former classmate Petanj begs her help in defusing a slanderous campaign against Petanj’s cousin, Villette, who’s under consideration for a donship at a rival university, Stortellen. Since Mossa refuses to help (or at least, appears to, in a gambit reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles), Pleiti is forced to investigate on her own. As she infiltrates Villette’s circle, it becomes clear that several people might be resentful of the Modern scholar’s success as an academic and inventor. Pleiti attempts to put her own experience of academia and what she knows of Mossa’s investigative methods to bear, even as the campaign escalates from threatening letters, anonymous accusations, and acts of vandalism to more dangerous incidents. By this third installment, as charming and even action-packed as it is, the construction of this science fantasy might be pushing the boundaries of implausibility too far. Older has degrees and experience in economics, politics, and disaster response; she clearly knows that a society with limited resources would be unlikely to produce the luxurious food and drinks she describes, and understanding people as she does, it seems equally unlikely that a society that also produces murderers wouldn’t have at least one prison and a stricter judicial system than is presented here. There’s a point being made, but it’s not entirely clear what it is.

Entertaining and thrilling, but those nagging questions…