A Quantum Murder

Readable but disappointing for me. I was impressed with Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy and OK with the Void Trilogy. This book, second in the earlier Mandel trilogy, has none of the cosmic expanse of those later works. It is set in an intermediate future -- say 50 years on -- and takes place completely in England. For me this smaller scope hurts. Dubious science can be forgiven in the far future in an intergalactic conflict. It's another to see it in a cozy murder. Both the method of murder and how the detection makes a key discovery depend on nonsense technology that I would expect in a second-tier TV series. There is also a secondary plot involving a rich heiress and her computer-simulated grandfather that seems like an homage to show more Heinlein's worst elements.

Read if you want, but no need to seek it out. show less

Even allowing for the fact that I think the author's digression into poetically erudite space-fillers is a big distraction for me (I don't care what kind of stylish clothing everyone is wearing--what the hell does any of it have to do with the plot?), his stories are, otherwise, really good. A good 'locked room" murder mystery, with a lot of sideline action that serves to fill in a lot of the background story of the milieu--or, sometimes is just more digression. I also have to admit that Hamilton portrays a pretty convincing "England after the sea levels rise and swamp the British coasts; and after a fascist right wing government has mostly lost control of Britain; and one of the super industrial cartels is taken over by a savvy teenage show more heiress". In any case, if the haute couture entices some females to read his stories, the more power to him...and them. [And, I must add that I don't remember any such problems with Hamilton's later stories---'Pandora's Star' & 'Judas Unchained' had no such distractions that I can remember.] One other thing that bothered me is Barclay Shaw's cover illustration: both characters look much too young, and the Eleanor on the cover does not match her description in the book! show less

This was a classic locked room" mystery. But on a much larger scale.

And it deals with implanting memories and is totally based on the premise that a mind can be recreated in another human and hence that human becomes the first person who's mind it was.
(Which is bogus, because we are more than our memories. But I digress.)

The Mandell's are farmers, enjoying the bucolic life, trying to forge a new life together. Then they get dragged into a murder mystery and wormholes, and FTL and psychic glands all get involved.

While sex was hinted at, not so subtly, in the first book, in this book we have a scene or two that stop just short of the explicitly graphic. Which doesn't bode well for Book 3."

My reaction to reading this novel in 2001. Spoilers follow.

Hamilton tries to put some of the psi powers in this series on a rational footing by evoking quantum physics in the figure of the roguish, rather hippyish Professor Edward Kitchener who takes syntho drugs to try to peer, through interlinked wormholes, into the past and other time tracks and, possibly, develop a stardrive as well as coming up with grand unified theory combining all of physics with psychic powers. While I found this novel enjoyable, I didn't like it as well as it's predecessor, Mindstar Rising. The mind control program beamed into the brain via laser beam was not convincingly rationalized though it made for an interesting fight at novel's end with Mandel show more confronting a group of zombies. The novel seemed to dwell longer on Julia Evans then strictly necessary for the plot, but then Hamilton is once again, as with Ione Saldana in his Night's Dawn trilogy, creating a young, likeable (if flawed) princess type character that everyone is either in awe of or loves. I did like the simmering conflicts between the Trinities and the remnants, just a suburb away, of the People's Socialist Party constabulary (and the scene where Mandel confronts a pathetic old PSP constable was good) and how most people want to put the PSP days of England behind them. show less

Portions read as anti-religion. Author has little real understanding of good and evil and how they present in the real world. Science and technology background is fairly consistent, although there is one HUGE reaching scenario. Characters interact and develop reasonably well. Protagonist is likeable.

The only quarrel I had with this book was how Juliet was obsessed with how the media perceived her outfits. Otherwise a great book. Definitely enjoyed the solving of the murder.

9/10
A science fiction mystery with enough surprises and twists to satisfy this reader.