For her entire life, Mallory has been a magnet for murder. Literally. She can't stay in one place longer than a year or two before a murder occurred in her vicinity. She never committed the crime, and she almost always helped solve it, but that hasn't kept various law enforcement agencies from harassing her. So when the opportunity arises for her to quite literally leave humanity behind and become one of three humans on the sentient space station Eternity, Mallory jumps at the chance. But the arrival of a shuttle full of human tourists arrives, so does murder, and once again, Mallory must solve the crime, this time against the backdrop of a breached space station and internal conflict among Eternity's many alien races.
This book was described to me as "Murder, She Wrote in space," and to a degree, that's accurate. Mallory and Xan (a former military quartermaster and current refugee on Eternity) are compelling characters, and I loved their backstories. However, there might be a few too many characters to keep track of — particularly when you add in the various alien life forms (though I dug the fact that the universal translator gave the giant rock-like Gneiss names like "Stephanie" and "Tina") — and the plot was thus a bit confusing. I have a feeling Lafferty is going to write more books with Mallory and I can only hope that the setting and characters are settled enough from this book that the mystery can shine through.
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