The Darkling Plain

the long version

She had been murdered in a particularly gruesome manner, her head mashed to a pulp and limbs severed from her body. Since she was a call girl, one wouldn’t expect too much effort to be put into solving the case. But this call girl was once someone’s baby, and that someone just happened to be an extremely powerful congressman, and so the call went out. The murderer would be found. Sounds like it could be taken from today’s headlines, right? Wrong. For this murder takes place in the distant future, and the man chosen to solve the case is a deep space traveler, a type of U.S. marshal for an organization called Interplanetary Enforcement. Many things have changed: people can put the aging process on hold and travel the great expanses of space. But some things have not changed, including the basic human emotions explored in this science fiction novel, The Darkling Plain, by L. A. Wilson, Jr., a dazzling achievement and great read.