he people who settled the planet Tashista sought to create an egalitarian society. But societies change, and Tashista has developed the worst socioeconomic inequities in human space. The upper-class Kishamkur enjoy immense inherited wealth, while the lower-class Nashamata are so desperately poor that most will do anything to earn enough credits to escape into the Moshamadur middle class. The crime is worst in Soshambe, where a serial killer stalks the city's poverty-stricken "underways."
The serial killer is known as the Scarab, for he or she kills only during the cold, gloomy season called the Secant of the Scarab. The Scarab operates exclusively in the Nashamata district, drugging and mutilating every victim in the same brutal manner. These are the only patterns. Otherwise, the Scarab is unpredictable—impossible to catch under the best conditions.
Conditions are bad. Police Prefect Marym Dunnis intelligently directs the Scarab investigation, but since she oversees the Nashamata district, she's chronically understaffed and underfunded. Also, her superiors have no interest in catching this multiple murderer, because all 26 victims were poor. Then the Scarab kills a rich man's son, who was slumming in the Nashamata.
Suddenly Dunnis finds herself pressured to find the killer, and also finds herself forcibly paired with an offworlder, an amateur detective named Sandor Dyle. Famed for his pattern-recognition skills, Dyle has solved mysteries that baffled the crime-fighting professionals of many planets. But Tashista, isolated and segregated, is not like other worlds. Surely Dyle can only hinder Dunnis's already-crippled investigation.
A writer and critic enters the SF novel arena
Don D'Ammassa has an extensive background as a reviewer and writer of science fiction and horror. For 25 years, he's served as book reviewer for Science Fiction Chronicle. He's published over 100 short stories in Asimov's, Analog and other magazines and anthologies. His horror publications include his nonfiction book, D'Ammassa's Guide to Modern Horror Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography, and his first two novels, Blood Beast and Servants of Chaos. His third, Scarab, is his first SF novel.
In Scarab, crime is rampant, the inevitable result of Tashista's severe social Darwinism. Both the narrative and the main characters make frequent observation of the planet's socioeconomic failures. Readers may reasonably suspect D'Ammassa is critiquing both the presidency of George W. Bush and the more optimistic assumptions of libertarian hard SF.
Unfortunately, this suspicion is never verified, because the socioeconomic savagery has only a remote connection with the serial killer's behavior. The economic problems form the novel's theme,
but they prove not to be the serial killer's motivation. As a result, the theme is contradicted—canceled.
Throughout Scarab, D'Ammassa presents his socioeconomic and other world-building details in chunky, clunky infodumps that stop the narrative dead. The novel's first line leads to two pages of expository digression on Tashista's weather, moons, foods, fashion and class system. Many SF authors "show, not tell," subtly weaving small world-building details into the ongoing story,
because big, dry data clumps are boring. A reader can skip Scarab's infodumps and still follow the plot. But many readers will abandon this novel before the end.
