I’ve mentioned before how I grew up reading a lot of SF — Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula Le Guin, Larry Niven, E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith — and how certain authors like Philip K. Dick, Sheri S. Tepper, and Connie Willis still delight me in my dotage.
With a lot of Agatha Christie fans — Puzzle Doctor included — throwing their hands up at yet another televisation taking excessive liberties with the source material, I’d like to make you all feel better with the following words: I am a Philip K. Dick fan.
Space Case (2014), the opening volume in Stuart Gibbs’ Moon Base Alpha trilogy, did a very good job of marrying some intelligent scientific speculation with an appealing juvenile detective and a decent whodunnit plot, and follow-up Spaced Out (2016) is even better again.
For once, I, on my blog typically concerned with titles from some 60 to 80 years ago, am allowing external factors to influence me here. Not just in looking at a book published during my own lifetime (thathappensnotinfrequently) but one that’s been in the news of late, too.
If last week’s self-published impossible murder didn’t work for you then, well, firstly have a quiet word with yourself, but also perhaps this week will make you more comfortable. Perhaps even…cozy.
Welcome to the Last Chance Hotel, standing alone in seemingly endless woodland, where a coterie of oddballs are about to descend and usher in an impossible murder over dinner.
Had I gotten round to this sooner, it may have qualified as a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat attempt, but TomCat has already read this one and so really all that remained was to see if I was equally underwhelmed by it.
The last two Saturdays on here have seen me dive into modern hardback novels, so I thought I would continue that trend and pretend once more that I’m doing this purely for TomCat’s benefit.