March to Other Worlds Day 27: Planetside by Michael Mammay
Day 27 Planetside by Michael Mammay
Michael Mammay is staking out a reputation for constructing sophisticated mysteries that intertwine the interests of his futuristic military and the corporations that supply them with their hardware. His novel, Planetside, caught my interest from the very first pages and didn’t let it go until I’d read the final word. Colonel Carl Butler is getting ready to retire when his old friend and the second most powerful general in his branch of the military asks him to travel to the planet, Cappa, halfway across the galaxy to investigate the disappearance of an important politician’s son. It actually seems like a pretty straight forward assignment except that at Cappa, no one will cooperate with him. And Butler does need help. After all, the injured young man was evacuated from the battlefield by a shuttle but the hospital claims he never arrived and the shuttle pilots can’t be questioned because they are conveniently dead. As if that isn’t bad enough, all the records that might trace what happened have disappeared—and all of that is BEFORE the mystery gets complicated.
This is both a great story and a great mystery. Carl Butler is a superb character—an old colonel with a heroic past he won’t discuss and very little in the way of diplomatic skills. He’s a bulldog who won’t stop once he has a mission and yet he also has a peculiar sense of honor and duty that becomes very important to the resolution of the case.
Mammay plays fair with the reader throughout this book. I don’t say that just because I figured out the core of the mystery halfway through the novel. There are plenty of clues, many of them coming in the middle of shocking surprises. The ending was powerful, made total sense, and yet, I didn’t see it coming. Anyone who likes a good mystery will enjoy this novel.
Finally, narrator R.C. Bray, really enhances an already superb novel with his spot-on depiction of Butler’s voice—a totally credible aging colonel who lacks patience for most of the BS happening around him.
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