Night Train to Rigel

Timothy Zahn is a journeyman author who knows how to play with the tropes of several genres. He knows, for example, that trains are more fun than starships as settings for espionage thrillers. So how about a starship that is a train? In Night Train to Rigel, a not-quite-former covert agent travels on a spacefaring train catering to a whole Star Wars cantina of alien races and run by sentient spiders. The story makes direct and appropriate allusions to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and North by Northwest. There is even a scene where our hero crawls out on the roof to travel between cars. And here is a future spy-craft tip: never touch the Modhran coral.

A fun, quick read. My first book by Zahn. It was a real old fashioned SF romp, with a quasi military sf feel. Very much in the vein of CJ Cherryh. Like Cherryh's books, it was meaty as well as quick and compelling.

I liked the characters, the tension between the 2 partners, the layers of mystery on top of mystery. The many twists and changes that kept the story changing. I also liked all the aliens, and how the civilizations were explained. Enough detail to make sense, and make you want more, but woven into the story, not an info-dump.

I think this could be a start of a really good series.

Night Train to Rigel is a murder mystery set on an interstellar train, mixed with something very much like Cold War wilderness of mirrors spy intrigue. I have to assume the model Zahn used for the former is Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. This turns out better than I might have expected. Zahn gives us some color about the Quadrailed trains that traverse the galaxy, but this is the kind of science fiction that is about the ultimate effects of technology on society, rather than science fiction about technology itself.

Cars of the Orient Express By WLDiffusion - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35086531
CARS OF THE ORIENT EXPRESS

BY WLDIFFUSION - OWN WORK, CC BY-SA 4.0, show more HTTPS://COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG/W/INDEX.PHP?CURID=35086531

Frank Compton, his protagonist, is certainly an investigative genius along the lines of Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, observant and clever, able to see his opponents both metaphorical and literal from the inside out. Also eccentric and a bit of a loner. I might also add that he is something of a Bayesian, or a superforecaster, continually updating his predictions as new information comes in.

The other influence apparent in Night Train to Rigel is Film Noir, and Hitchcock in particular. Compton loves making allusions to classic movies, regardless of whether his alien interlocutors are likely to have any idea what he is talking about. Which is OK, since these jokes are clearly intended for his amusement [and ours].

And since those are the models Zahn is using, it unsurprisingly turns out that Frank Compton has gotten himself into something far deeper than he really wanted to when he agrees to investigate the mysterious threat to the Quadrail system that links the galaxy together. Of course, no one is really who they seem, and everyone has an agenda and ulterior motives, which largely remain hidden from view until the denouement. This is all part of the fun. And it was really fun.

Of course Frank Compton saves the day. However, there is always more going on underneath the surface than first appears. There are four more volumes in the Quadrail series, and since this one hooked me, I then had to run out and find the rest before I went on vacation, because I really wanted to see what happened. This is a fun series, and well worth your time. show less

Hitchcock... in SPACE!!!!

Take the 39 Steps / North by Northwest and put it on an interstellar train (yes, really) and you've got a hint of what Zahn has going on here. Accepting the notion of this interstellar train and building it into a hard-sf / noir story, there are plenty of twists and turns going on here. Obviously Grand Admiral Thrawn is not Mr Zahn's only trick.

Intricate plot and plenty of mysteries wrapped up here - I'm sorry it took me almost two years to get around to reading this one. Happily, I've got three more in my TBR pile (virtual pile in the cloud - thanks, Kindle!)

Zahn's Night Train To Rigel combines classic alien encounter science fiction with noir detective atmosphere and spy thriller for a good read. The plot is twisty enough to make your head spin, and the setting is well conceived. I liked the interplay between the characters. So with all these good things happening, why did I rate the book at 3.5 stars? Mostly because I never felt that the main characters were in too much danger or that the galaxy was truly threatened by the bad guys. Having said that, I did enjoy the book, will recommend it to others and will eagerly look for the sequel.

The beginning of a nice little SF mystery series, Night Train to Rigel starts us off with a stranger dying right into ex-spy Frank Compton's arms. Pretty soon he's off on an interstellar adventure searching for a force capable -- and apparently set on -- destroying the Quadrail, an FTL train system operated by "Spiders". But who really controls the spiders? And who's that chick that keeps following him? I enjoyed this a lot. Zahn is good at inventing aliens with their own tics and languages and he follows mystery conventions faithfully too. Like any series it starts to drag a bit later on, but this first book in the series does a great job setting it all in motion.

These Quad Rail series covers are butt ugly. But it is a good story.

Aliens, an evil hivemind, a galactic railway whose secret is only known to one species and one man to solve it all. Reminded me of 1920’s mystery, just “futurized”.