Monday, January 20, 2025

"The Distinction Was Lost on the Now Dead Colonel, His Eyes Staring Vacantly Ahead"

"Murder in Space."
By Les Johnson (ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; and the author's webpage HERE).
Found in Baen Free Fiction 2021.
Artwork by David A. Hardy
Short story (10 pages as a PDF).
Online (HERE; go to Chapter 8).

   "In cases like this, if murder were involved, then ninety percent of the time the motive was money, sex, or power. He corrected himself; the ninety percent was for men, who committed the most murders. If the perp was a woman, then he could add jealousy to the list and be within the same ninety percent statistic."

"RUSSIA," as Winston Churchill once remarked, "is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Private eye Charlie Shattles is about to find out how mysterious, enigmatic, and just plain baffling things can get in 21st-century Russia—if he doesn't get killed first . . .

Prose moments:
   "Funny how no one was eager to speak with a private investigator. They could not easily put off the police as easily as they could him. They also knew he was not as likely as the police to follow all the rules when conducting his interview and investigation. Such was the life of a PI."
   "He began to channel his inner Dashiell Hammett."
   "For a PI who specialized in space-related cases, Shattles hated going into space."
   "Money—yes. Sex—almost certainly. Power—maybe. The motive was certainly there, but was there opportunity?"
   "Near-death experiences like that just didn’t go away like they did in the entertainment vids where all the ‘tough’ guy or woman needed was a stiff drink and the company of the opposite sex."
   "Sometimes he hated having to always be reading people. He longed for a day that he could take people at face value. Maybe someday . . ."

Main characters:
~ Maksim Kezerashvili ("had gotten himself killed when he and his expensive space yacht became interplanetary dust and gas after the ship’s fusion drive lost containment allowing superheated plasma to rapidly escape from its formerly highly condensed state and vaporize his ship—as unconstrained superheated plasmas were likely to do"), Charlie Shattles ("You want me to investigate the death of your CEO and determine if it was actually an accident and, if not, to help the police catch whoever killed him"), Joseph Bychkov ("If I were you, I would begin with me"), Lada Agapov ("greeted Shattles with a smile and nearly flawless British English") Lana Kezerashvili ("stands to inherit the bulk of his money, including a sizeable number of shares in this company"), Martina Egorov ("A quite simple disagreement"), Roger Grimes ("was unremarkable in appearance, dressed in a heavy black overcoat and wearing an old-fashioned hat reminiscent of what American men might have worn in the 1930s or 40s"), and Viktor Fedorov ("was tall, at least 6’ 2”, had blond hair, green eyes, and looked like he lifted cars in his morning workouts. In other words, his mere presence would intimidate most men and attract most women").

Typo: "did not reach [should be react]".

Comment: PI Charlie Shattles deserves his own book.

References and resource:
- "Proxima Centauri" (HERE)
- "Star City" (HERE)
- "Baikonur Cosmodrome" (HERE)
- "Russian parliament" (HERE)
- "Wernher Von Braun" (HERE)
Artwork by Chesley Bonestell
- "Jeff Bezos" (HERE)
- "cis-lunar" (HERE)
- "the Duma" (HERE).
Source: Wikipedia (HERE).
- Note: "Murder in Space" is set against the background of the author's novel, Saving Proxima (2021):
  "The year is 2072. At the lunar farside radio observatory, an old-school radio broadcast is detected, similar to those broadcast on Earth in the 1940s, but in an unknown language, coming from an impossible source, and originating at an equally impossible location—Proxima Centauri. While the nations of Earth debate making first contact, they learn that the Proximans are facing an extinction-level disaster, forcing a decision: will Earth send a ship on a multiyear trip to provide aid?"
 Go (HERE) for more.

The bottom line:
  It is not in the best interests of any government to tell the truth.

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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