Case of the colonist's corpse

The case of the colonist¹s corpse, by Bob Ingersoll and Tony Isabella.
Pocket Books 2004.

I enjoyed this book.

It is presented like an old paperback pulp detective story, except that
Star Trek appears at the top of the cover, but not too obtrusively. The
edges of the pages are coloured to add verisimilitude. I recognised the
writers because Bob Ingersoll used to write a column on legal matters
associated with comics for the Comics Buyer¹s Guide, and Tony Isabella is
a comics writer, who created Black Lightning among others.
The story follows the structure of a murder mystery. We follow the victim
for a while, as he accumulates enemies, and then our detective tracks down
his killer. As a novel structure this has a few problems. We follow a
person for about two fifths of the book, and he then goes off the stage,
leaving us stranded with nobody to care about. The detective then takes
over. In this case he is a defence lawyer, Samuel T Cogley, who has just
previously saved Captain Kirk¹s career. He is a sufficiently interesting
character that we follow him to the end of the book.
There are a number of nice touches to this book. Captain Kirk and the
Enterprise appear, but just to ferry Cogley to his post, and provide a few
security staff. There are a few references to ³current² events on the
ship, and a few references to Jonathan Archer. These had a strange effect
on me. I thought ³Here are references to Archer in this old book... but
wait, it¹s not an old book! It just pretends to be one!² There is also a
passing reference to the Xindi, which may turn out to be non-canon if they
get retconned out of Trek history as the series progresses on television.
What didn¹t work for me was that technology - especially computer
technology - was more like ten years in the future than several hundred,
even if it was on a backward planet. But that makes the story more
accessible, so it is not a serious problem.
The story is yet another - this was also in the Lost Era series - where
the Klingons and the Federation are competing for control of a planet
under the auspices of the Organians, and I was pleased to see that the
story did not end with the Federation yet again winning. It was even
implied they might lose!

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http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mcardle