One Way (SF) - S J Morden ***(*)

If, like me, you love both SF and murder mysteries, the marketing for this book made it seem perfect. 'A murder mystery set on the frozen red wastes of Mars. Eight astronauts - one killer - No way home.' When Agatha Christie set her first ever murder mystery, The Mysterious Affair at Styles in a country house, she knew what she was doing. Confining the murderer and potential victims in an isolated location made for a cleverly managed setting, with a limited enough set of suspects to make it practical to take on the detective at the game of whodunnit.

So, I was rather confused to discover that the book is hardly a murder mystery at all. At least not until you get to about page 265 out of 330. The main line of the story is not bad at all - it just isn't a murder mystery. This mission to Mars is to set up a base for NASA to use later. It's a private mission, and rather than expensive astronauts, prison occupants with life sentences are used. It's a clever premise and interesting to see how it works out. Each chapter begins with a little bit of back story information in the form of 'documentary' style snippets which show how what would eventually unfold originated.

In effect, it's a book of three halves (to recycle the old football joke). The first 60 odd pages are a bit dull, because it primarily only involves the isolated training of the central character, Frank Kitteredge, who is serving a whole life sentence for killing the drug dealer responsible for his son's death. With very little human interaction, it's hard to make this section very interesting. Thankfully things move up a gear once there is a chance for Kitteridge to work with the other 6 convicts and the group's minder. And the last section, once Kitteridge finally works out what's going on, switches into high energy thriller mode and works brilliantly.

I say he finally works it out as it's pretty obvious what's going on long before anyone spots it. I'd also say from a business perspective, the mise en scène documentary-style sections are very far fetched, as is the abrupt wrap up in the last couple of pages. And none of the characters ever develops much beyond a two-dimensional form.

Overall, I'd give it 3 1/2 stars given the option - the Mars setting, though not quite as well done as in The Martian, is nicely handled (with the exception of dealing with radiation, which only gets a passing mention and nothing seems to be done about it). When things finally move into top gear it's a real page turner. But far more could have been done to make it an effective murder mystery and to give it more depth.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Beyond Belief - Helen Pearson *****

Apparently it comes as a surprise to many that medicine was not particularly scientific until the end of the twentieth century (to be honest, it's no surprise to me - we had a GP who used homeopathy in the 90s). Instead it was based on anecdotal guidance - the kind of thing that appeared to work. Evidence-based medicine has since improved the field, trying where possible to base decisions on evidence, ideally based on randomised controlled trials. The first part of Helen Pearson's book covers this well - though I think it's by far the least interesting part of what we discover. Instead what's truly fascinating is the rest of it, looking at a wide range of other fields where evidence was rarely properly used and that are only now starting to dip a toe in the water. These include social policy, policing, conservation, business and education. The main part of the book gives us examples of how bad these areas have been in terms of basing decisions on what's always been ...

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

Search This Blog