Review: Vulcan Academy Murders

This book is by Jean Lorrah. Let me start by saying the writing style is nice and fun to read. She has captured the feel of the Trek universe and the characters. The new characters fit in well and bring new views and connections to the old characters. Having several scenes from view point of these new characters works well, and the parts from Sarek's view point are very well done. That being said I can only give this three stars. As a Trek book for Trek fans I can fully recommend it.

But as a murder mystery it completely fails for me. It is not a long book, 214 pages, but by page 36 I knew who the murder was. This is especially troublesome because the characters in the book didn't know it was anything but a tragic equipment failure until page 70 (at which point Kirk decides to investigate). Perhaps if it was not named Vulcan Academy Murders, so the reader didn't know it was a murder mystery until page 70 the early clues as to the murder wouldn't have been so obvious. Or perhaps it would have been better to make the murderer obvious from the first scene like in a Columbo episode.

I kept reading, hoping there would be a twist and it wouldn't be who I thought, but alas no. There was the predictable misdirection at the end, and the expected point where the murder exploits Kirk's obvious blind spot in his investigation to try to kill him. If you are a Trek fan, you will probably enjoy the read, but if you will most likely not be fooled by the mystery.