The mystery plot can work in almost any setting. One of the strongest settings is in space, or a Mystery In Space! This is just what we have in Michael Mammay’s debut novel Planetside.
A seasoned military officer uncovers a deadly conspiracy on a distant, war-torn planet…
War heroes aren’t usually called out of semi-retirement and sent to the far reaches of the galaxy for a routine investigation. So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it’s something big—and he’s not being told the whole story. A high councilor’s son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated—but there’s no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command.
The colonel quickly finds Cappa Base to be a labyrinth of dead ends and sabotage: the hospital commander stonewalls him, the Special Ops leader won’t come off the planet, witnesses go missing, radar data disappears, and that’s before he encounters the alien enemy. Butler has no choice but to drop down onto a hostile planet—because someone is using the war zone as a cover. The answers are there—Butler just has to make it back alive…
Colonel Carl Butler is our first-person narrator, a typical framing device for a mystery. Mammay has a really good grasp of character, at least Carl’s, because he comes across assured and experienced. He has good right to come across this way – he is a military veteran who has seen quite a lot.
This is more than just a mystery of a missing body; however. Butler wouldn’t have been asked to bring his skills and mind to the investigation if it was just a straight-forward murder. The dead soldier is the son of a high ranking and important politician. What deepens the mystery is that a body can’t be found and people at Cappa Base are untrusting of anybody outside of their own circles.
This is a pretty layered novel, there’s more to just the peanut butter of the missing politician’s son wrapped in the chocolate of the future space setting. Planetside is a fairly nuanced look into the somewhat closed culture of a military base and an entire culture shaped by a seemingly never-ending war. Despite Butler being a fairly decorated soldier himself, he isn’t part of the Cappa military personnel, so he is considered an outsider. He makes efforts to get to know some of these military personnel and military doctors, but it is a challenge for Carl. What balances it is the wry and snarky inner dialogue from Carl Butler’s inner thoughts. Some humor makes for a fairly balanced novel throughout.
The familiarity of the murder-mystery plot will draw the reader into the story, allowing for some interesting things to happen in the setting. The parallels to the seemingly never-ending war (or wars) in the Middle East are pretty obvious, but no less worthy. The parallels make for some illuminating insight. As the novel is set beyond the confines of Earth, alien life is of course, part of the novel. Mammay depicts a human civilization that is slightly more careful than expected when colonizing alien worlds, but it raises even more questions that are just touched upon in Planetside.
While a good portion of the action takes place on Cappa Base, Butler does eventually enter the war zone of the planet. Or, as the title implies, he goes Planetside to the world of Cappa. Although Butler no stranger to war, Mammay smartly pairs up Butler with a character unfamiliar with warzones who essentially acts as our eyes and ears. There’s more than chaos Planetside, including the potential for some answers to the questions Butler keeps asking.
This was a brisk, entertaining novel. Mammay didn’t give too much detail on the future introduced in the novel, just some bits in pieces that could be explored in future volumes. I was reminded a bit of some of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War novels, largely because of the snark and the older protagonist. I do have to give Mammay some credit for that ending, leaving things the way he did with his protagonist definitely wasn’t easy and showed some fortitude as a writer. I’m looking forward to seeing how and where Carl Butler’s story continues.
Recommended
© 2018 Rob H. Bedford
Mass Market Paperback | 384 Pages
HarperVoyager, July 2018
http://www.michaelmammay.com
Sample Chapter
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
