I loved this story. The world-building is fabulously detailed, but only trickles out in such manners that it supports the story. The characterisation is controlled, and compelling. The plot and the pacing are finely tuned suspense of investigation of an apparent suicide that becomes so much more. Good hard SF/SF in space fiction, good gritty detective fiction. ( )

Matters Arising is a detective procedure story in an extra-terrestrial science fiction setting. There’s an apparent suicide and there’s someone whose job it is to find out why.

It appeared to me to be heavily weighted toward the detective mystery elements, as if you had gone to a time a couple of hundred years from now and doggedly followed a detective’s investigation because that’s what you’re interested in, how they do their job, without spending much time thinking there was anything worth talking about or being impressed by in the panoramic cosmic and techno-marvel context. The flying vehicles, interesting sports like methane diving and the futuristic jobs are all there in the scene, so that’s good as it’s the main attraction to delight sci-fi enthusiasts, but you have to admit that this is first and foremost a crime investigation mystery. Agatha Christie readers would like this a lot, Carl Sagan readers would like it somewhat, for the engineering, and those who prefer the rainbow allure of high description imaginings in the fantasy future style coloured by emotion and alien cultural fizz will probably think the flat-foot case elements are not for them because no one morphs into a telepathic octopus.

There’s logic to this – and reality. I liked the flight over the dunes and the argument with the computer, which was a device to show the investigator’s determined character and refusal to be sabotaged within sight of the answer. This is what our future in space might genuinely turn out like, but don’t expect escapism because that’s not the message. This is a series of steps to answer a puzzle. Future advances have been built into the fabric of these characters’ lives, but the story normalises that and focusses on the people and the conundrum. This is sci-fi for crossword solvers. ( )

I’m a big nerd when it comes to space. I don’t know a lot, but I love stories set in space, science fiction stories, and stuff like that. I also love mysteries. When I got asked to review a book that had both, I couldn’t resist.

Guerline Scarfe – what a name – is the equivalent of a police officer sometime in the future. She’s been asked to investigate a suicide. It looks like a pretty straightforward case, but she is a thorough officer and figures that any death deserves an explanation.

Tanja Morgenstein was working on Jupiter’s moon Titan when she pulled off her helmet. Despite the doctors best efforts, she died. Now it’s up to Guerline to figure out why she did it.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the mystery aspect, I liked the characters, and I really enjoyed the setting. It’s a world enough like our own that I could identify with what was going on, but enough different that it was completely fresh. I recommend this one and I’m looking forward to the next book in this series. Apparently Petrie has other books out but none in this series yet, but who knows? 4/5 stars and thanks for the chance to read it. ( )

Matters Arising From the Identification of the Body by Simon Petrie is a science fiction crime novella set on Titan. It follows a public investigator looking into the suicide of a young woman who opened her own helmet and exposed herself to Titan's atmosphere.

Scarfe's job is investigate the suicide and the reasons leading up to it. It's told as a police procedural with a solid science fictional setting as a back drop. Petrie has written several stories set on Titan (see my reviews of his short story collections, Rare Unsigned Copy and Difficult Second Album) but I got the impression that this version of Titan was more populated and hence the story is probably set a bit further into the future than those other stories.

As expected, the scientific background is something Petrie gets spot on in this novella. As well as a well-developed setting, I appreciated the additional layers to Scarf's life. She wasn't solely focussed on her job, she also had a family and a back story that wasn't directly related to her job or this particular case, which I appreciated. Matters Arising From the Identification of the Body was fully fleshed out, for all that it was a novella and didn't take me very long to read.

As far as the crime aspect went, I pretty much only read speculative fiction crime so my opinion is a little coloured by that. This ticked all my boxes though. The mystery elements were intrinsically tied to the science fictional setting and the "solution" followed logically from what the reader had been presented with. I did guess one aspect of the resolution, but not the full explanation, which was handled well, in my opinion.

I highly recommend Matters Arising From the Identification of the Body to fans of science fiction and mystery/crime stories. It is both a procedural and science fiction, but I expect it will appeal more to fans of the latter genre than the former. This was also a more series story than Petrie's other mystery series set on a space elevator, which is significantly more tongue-in-cheek. I am looking forward to reading more stories about Scarfe and set on Titan.

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )