My family still cracks jokes about why on earth anyone would want to invite Jessica Fletcher or Hercule Poirot or any of those other detectives anywhere. People die almost as soon as they arrive! That’s certainly the problem for talented but reluctant detective Mallory Viridian in Mur Lafferty’s highly entertaining novel, Station Eternity. From a young age, murders just seem to happen wherever Mallory goes. It’s so bad that Mallory actually moves onto an alien space station to get away from the chaos. Life is good there, until she gets word that a delegation of humans are on their way to the station.
We meet Mallory when she’s in a bit of a tizzy. As soon as she hears the gossip about the humans on their way, Mallory starts beating down doors to argue against letting more humans aboard the Eternity. Told no, she starts asking friends for rides off the station. As Mallory races hither and thither on the Eternity, we not only find out why she is so very terrified of having any more humans aboard (really, just about everywhere she goes, someone dies) but also about the fantastical galaxy of aliens who live and work on Eternity.
The mystery in Station Eternity is of the kind I particularly like. Seemingly unconnected events slowly coalesce over the course of the novel into an ending that ties up every loose end. Everything that happens in this book happens for a reason, to the extent that re-reading it would be a treat. Since you’d know the ending, you can slow down to savor all of those important events and details, like a great in-joke. What I loved most about Station Eternity, however, was the thought that Lafferty must have put into creating a space station that initially wasn’t designed for humans and inhabited by species who think that humans are volatile and primitive (we are). For example, Mallory had to spend some time when she first came aboard Eternity to find out which of the foods served at the various cafes wouldn’t kill her or make her sick. She had to make do with furniture that wasn’t built to her scale. Most of all, Mallory constantly has to answer questions about why humans do the things we do. We are a weird species, biologically, socially, and psychologically, when you start to think about it.
Station Eternity isn’t a perfect book. Mallory’s fretting got on my nerves more than once and some plot threads were dropped a little too long before being picked up to wrap into the conclusion. (Why is no one concerned when the ambassador disappears near the beginning of the book?) But these quibbles are minor when considered against the elaborate mystery and Lafferty’s imagination. Lafferty also brings a lot of humor to this book, causing me to chuckle more than once as I read about Mallory and her friends misadventures on Eternity.