From archive (archive)
Subject: STARSHIP DEATH by Randall Garrett (mild spoiler)
From: duane@anasazi.UUCP
Organization: Anasazi, Phoenix Az.
Date: 22 Jun 86 07:00:47 SDT



The jacket reads:

  "They were in deep space, past the point of no return, when the saboteur
  struck. There were plenty of suspects, including an experimental robot,
  and many possible motivations. But when they found the first body, they
  knew they were facing a ruthless killer who would murder them all if he
  was not caught -- and blow up the ship if he was."

Based on the summary above and my familiarity with the author's Lord Darcy
detective SF novels, I started reading this book, expecting a nice mystery, 
different, perhaps, than the Lord Darcy genre, but still of a high caliber.
I was very disappointed.

The book has a short introduction by someone other than the author; a little
information about Randall Garrett is given, and a comment is made which
leads one to believe that the book is of somewhat recent vintage: the writer
states that the climax of the book has elements in common with the recent
Star Trek movie. Well, the copyright is 1962, so a lot of time passed between
writing and publishing.

The story starts out quite well. The main character, Mike "the Angel" Gabriel,
is introduced. He runs his own high technology engineering company and is
a hulk of a man. The time and place are not-too-distant future US. Before long
Mike joins a spacecraft crew to take an experimental robot to an isolated
planet, and that's when I started losing interest.

There are a number of problems with the plot and the characters. There
are two conflicting plots, one having to do with the robot, and the other
having to do with sabotage on the spaceship. Instead of supporting each
other, the two themes dilute interest and suspense. The characters are somewhat
poorly drawn, and I didn't develop much of an interest in any of them.
I like the way the author attempted to explain some of the technology
involved, but the three parts -- plot, character development, and technology --
just didn't hang together very well.

Much as I enjoyed the Lord Darcy books, I can only give this book 2.0 stars
out of 4.0 (its fair, but I went through the second half somewhat fast just
so I could finish it).

-- 

Duane Morse	...!noao!{mot|terak}!anasazi!duane
(602) 870-3330