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Bureau Of Special Investigations Starside: Death Sentence by Roger McBride Allen
01/04/2008 . Source: Joules Taylor 
pub: Bantam Spectra. 482 page paperback. Price: $ 6.99 (US), $ 8.99 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-553-58727-2. Buy Bureau Of Special Investigations Starside: Death Sentence in the USA - or Buy Bureau Of Special Investigations Starside: Death Sentence in the UK  check out websites: www.bantamdell.com, www.rmallen.netand www.bsi-starside.com
'They are the elite agents of interstellar investigation. Their mission: solve off-Earth crimes and protect humanity's starside interests. They are the men and women of the Bureau of Special Investigations - BSI - and their cases are literally out of this world.' (From the back cover blurb)
In the first book, 'The Cause Of Death', Hannah Wolfson, an experienced BSI agent, was reluctantly partnered with Jamie Mendez, a new recruit, in a pilot scheme to see if agent pairs could survive long enough to actually complete the mission. The scheme proved to be a success, with the mission successfully accomplished and both agents surviving. In this second book, 'Death Sentence', Hannah and Jamie are again partnered, this time in an effort to discover why a simple courier job went badly wrong. The courier, BSI agent Trevor Wilcox III, died of advanced old age at the chronological age of 25.
At least, that's the ostensible mission. Its true objective is to recover the key to decrypt a datafile of the type known as a War Starter for the potentially deadly information it contains:-
'If the matter in question is handled badly, if things go the wrong way - the end result is on the scale of an interstellar, interspecies war. Not necessarily a war that directly involves humans, and maybe not a war at all - but something that could be just as violent and destabilising. An uprising. A plague. Something that could do the same amount of damage as a major war.' (p 10)
All that's known is that the file concerns the Metrans, one of the Ancient Races and that the key must be on Metran System or in the single-person ship in which Wilcox travelled. The ship has been searched as thoroughly as the organisation knew how in the time available to them. Hannah and Jamie are to return to Metran in the same ship, spending the voyage time performing another, more extensive search.
Meanwhile, on Metran, Learned Searcher Taranarak finds herself in conflict with Bulwark of Constancy, one of the Unseen and one of the most ancient of the Ancient Races in a conflict that threatens to destabilise a culture that hasn't changed in millions of years.
The first book took place mainly on-world. The action, if it can be called that, in the second book, is mostly in the tiny, cramped spaceship travelling to and from the Metran System. Only seven of the book's thirty chapters take place on the planet and most of those deal with a formal and very complicated banquet. Yet it's an intriguing, somewhat demanding read, requiring concentration so as not to miss any of the clues inherent in the text. I found myself trying to work out the solution before Hannah and Jamie. Always a good sign in a murder mystery!
I thoroughly enjoyed the first book and found this one equally satisfying. The political and cultural aspects of the work are beautifully detailed and realistic. The science is feasible, if more prominent in this novel, the alien species and their customs are believable and well delineated and the plot is pleasingly complex.
Heartily recommended to just about anyone who enjoys Science Fiction, but especially those with a fondness for murder mysteries, CSI and Agatha Christie.
Joules Taylor
http://www.heartsown.biz
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