After the events in the first of Brown’s Bengal Station series, Necropath, Jeff Vaughan hung up his telepathic implant and married Sukara. Two years later he has an undemanding but low paid job plus a baby on the way. A former colleague invites him to join her detective agency for good pay using the new improved, and hence less mentally debilitating, implants. For the sake of his wife and child Vaughan does not need much persuading. The subsequent investigation, farmed out by an overstretched police force, centres on the trademark murder of three people by laser.

A young orphaned girl, Pham, witnessed the latest killing and underwent a strange experience immediately afterwards. She now has a voice in her head which promises to protect her, a voice which is the consciousness of an alien.

As well as Vaughan and Sukara, the self-serving Dr Rao from Necropath also appears in this sequel. Perhaps it is the familiarity established from the previous book but here the characterisation seemed fuller - although there is too much emphasis on how Pham resembles Sukara’s dead younger sister Tiger.

As in Necropath, Vaughan leaves Earth - this time for the planet Mallory, where again the encounters he has are somewhat in the tradition of pulp SF. (A xenopath turns out to be a telepathic alien.) Vaughan’s departure has left Sukara in danger, though. The working through of the various plot lines and the tying together of the strands are effected efficiently.

Brown has something here. The Bengal Station setting is a grand conceit, a macrocosm whose levels Brown has barely touched and which could support many more stories; not all about telepaths. The society on Bengal Station seems to be modelled on India but the construction as a whole is really only glimpsed, and sometimes brings to mind memories of Babylon 5. I did wonder, though, whether relationships and attitudes in such a new environment would be quite so close a mirror of the old. But human nature is unchanging, I suppose. ( )

Our hero Jeff is off on another adventure.

This was not as great as the first book in the series. While it was new, it was also the same. The characters are all fairly superficial. The action is great. ( )