wo rival star empires are ostensibly at peace, but nonetheless continue to joust overtly and covertly on commercial fronts. The Jurisdiction are the "good guys," the Dolgorukij Combine the "nasties." Wedged in between the two opponents are the Langsarik, a space-roving band of pirates, unaffiliated with any planet, some several thousand strong in their fleet of spaceships.
As the novel opens, the Langsarik have finally been subdued by the Jurisdiction. Showing mercy, the ruling Bench decrees that all the Langsarik must be settled on a relatively undeveloped planet, near the town of Port Charid. If the Langsarik exhibit good behavior for a stipulated term of years, they will earn their freedom again. But this weighting of the Port Charid economy does not sit well with the Dolgorukij, who determine to smear the Langsariks by staging murders and raids bearing the Langsarik fingerprints and doom them to an even worse exile in the Gonebeyond.
The players in this intrigue include Walton Agenis, female leader of the Langsariks, and her nephew-lieutenant, Hilton Shires; a freelance space pilot named Kazmer Daigule; the chief conspirator among the Dolgorukij, Fisner Feraltz; and, most importantly, Jurisdiction Bench intelligence specialist Garol Vogel, who is given the task of sorting out the troubles at Port Charid.
After a massacre or two that seem to implicate the Langsarik unerringly, Vogel finds his suspicions aroused by the pat nature of events, and by the slightly too convincing actions and manners of Feraltz. With the aid of the Langsarik and Daigule, he eventually cuts through the net of deceptions, uncovers the real plotters and aids the Langsarik in their somewhat illegal escape to a more secure future.
Lost in a galaxy around the corner
Although packaged as military SF in the manner of David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Weber and David Feintuch, this novel is in reality a kind of SF police procedural, with a de-emphasis on the SF, and really not much of interest in the realm of detection either. Stodgy, labored and undramatic, this book disappoints on a number of levels.
Consider the SF aspects of the book first. We are expected to care about a clash of "exotic" cultures that are much less strange than many a modern society one could name. The Langsariks are supposed to be interstellar buccaneers, but they settle down to groundling life without a squeak, with fearsome Commander Agenis turning into a gardener and Hilton Shires becoming an inventory clerk. The Dolgorukij are supposed to be some manner of living contradiction: militant religious fanatics (the theology regarding the "Angel of Destruction" is the most nebulous I've ever encountered) but also profit-oriented traders as well. In the Jurisdiction, Matthews presupposes an empire centered on judicial regularity, and here she succeeds, but to her book's disadvantage, for Garol Vogel is as dry and dull as a tort, a combination of Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe with all the quirks removed.
In point of fact, this entire book could, without losing anything, be transplanted to contemporary America, with the United States as the Jurisdiction, the Langsariks as a colony of Bosnian refugees in Brooklyn and the Dolgorukij as their Serbian neighbors out to harass them. To get some idea of what's missing in this book, simply think of Herbert's Fremen or Dickson's Dorsai or any of Jack Vance's invented societies as examples of genuine cultural weirdness.
On the detecting front, Matthews takes the type of plot and material that might fill out a taut 150-page thriller and protracts it beyond endurance. Fatally, she swaps viewpoints continually among every single protagonist, insuring that the reader knows everything long before Vogel does, and thus frustrating us from trying to solve the mystery along with him. As for drama, the entire book is suffocated by being limited to basically a single set—Port Charid—itself of no real vividness or uniqueness. As for the mishmosh of a subplot involving Han-Solo-like Kazmer Daigule (he runs with the bad guys by mistake, then switches sides, takes religious vows and pursues a Romeo-and-Juliet love affair), the less said the better.
