Dead Space by Kali Wallace

Dead Space by Kali Wallace was one of the few recent science fiction books based on a story set in space, that really appealed to me. A rare combination of murder mystery and science fiction, this one is excellently paced, presents a fascinating premise of the mankind's space-faring ambitions set right at the centre of a multi-layered conspiracy that unravels with a gruesome murder aboard a remote space-station in the asteroid belt between Mars and Earth. 

I am watching the new Korean series on Netflix, The Silent Sea at the moment, so can appreciate the nuances and finer details that Kali Wallace effortlessly weaves into her narrative about living in space. The story unfolds in this faraway asteroid called Nimue, a lump the size of a potato in the whole universe, where Parthenope, one of the corporate bigwigs, have set up a mining operation. Our protagonist, Hester Marley is an AI scientist whose whole life got derailed when a terrorist organisation bombed the space-station they were working in. Leaving her horribly incapacitated for life, having to rely on bionic reconstructed metallic body parts for moving around. It also is a cruel joke that life plays on her because Marley who had invented one of the most 'intelligent' and complex AI beings as part of her experiments, is left to rely on such metallic extensions and also, being bankrupt by such medical procedures, has to settle for a low-grade 'safety officer' job assigned to the Parthenope corporation. In yet another cruel twist of fate, one of her old colleagues, a fellow survivor from her horrific accident, David Prussenko reaches out to her for help, out of the blue and days after this, he is brutally murdered on this remote mining operations station. 

Marley assigns herself to the investigation unit and reaches Nimue, where numerous interviews with the tightly knit crew of hardly 15-20 people aboard, leads her to believe that David had possibly chanced upon something big. And then someone had murdered him to keep this possibly big and damaging revelation quiet. She sets herself to the task quite diligently and with renewed determination. Because David wasn't just a colleague or a fellow survivor, but a friend with whom she had had numerous debates about the ethics of AI while building her own prototype of a thinking, complex AI Bot (which she had considered her own 'son' in yet another ironic quirky twist that Kali brings to the narrative). But little does she realise that the killer isn't done just yet. And any secret that she finds out, is going to cost her life too. 

In an excellently paced tight little puzzlebox of a narrative that unspools slowly, the reasons behind the horrific murder is slowly revealed by the three-fourths of the narrative.  But the story doesn't suffer from pacing till then, because the investigations set in the claustrophobic station, is also offset by Marley, the narrator's complex history. Her personal devils, the fears that plague her, her long-suffering ailments and her experitise in dealing with sentient AI, makes her a fairly interesting first-person narrative to be following. Marley keeps up with life, despite the horrendous accident with a dogged sense of hope. The same level of determination sets her on course for the investigation as well, despite being dead-ended by multiple folks on the station. Apart from Marley 

Dead Space is a fitting name to this mystery because it is indeed a locked-room mystery set aboard a small space-station in the asteroid belt. And life in the outer space is awfully 'cramped' - claustrophobic within sealed stations, where silly mistakes could cost you your life. Low gravity, the need for vac-suites, the multiple back-stories of why man-kind has now expanded into outer space, trying to set up living conditions on the red planet, the long-standing conflicts between Earth and the long suffering folks on Mars, living in abject poverty - all of these world building aspects are beautifully balanced with propulsive storytelling as we walk a dangerous edge, heading towards discoveries, we know, will catapult Marley and her other investigators' life in extreme danger.

Kali is a master storyteller and skilfully weaves multiple layers into this web of mystery as we hurtle past the no-return point. There were some delightful twists towards the end as well, extremely pivotal to the murder mystery itself and organically developed. I loved how all of the various sub plots finally came together enmeshed firmly as being related to the mystery itself. Above all, Kali Wallace has written a well plotted intelligent thriller, that starts off as a murder mystery that takes on the pace of a runaway freight train. An adult science fiction story that doesn't skimp on the science-fictional aspects of living in space, all the time, dangling us over a precipice, with non-stop thrills. Kali has been definitely added to the list of my favourite authors now, for all things thriller or sci-fi. (Salvation Day!) This would have been one of my fav reads for last year, had I persisted and finished it off. (regrets!)