The story of the first murder in the generation spaceship, "Kybele" and it hasn't even left Earth orbit.

Helt Borresen, although not a policeman, is given the task, as the ship Incident Analyst, of determining what happened to Cash Ryan, found impaled in a tree near one of the towers holding up the ship's artificial sun. The ship, by the way, is a hollowed out asteroid. At first it looks like a suicide, a leap from the tower, but soon looks more like a murder. Why would someone want to murder Cash Ryan, a contract worker due to leave "Kybele" in just a matter of days as the great ship was preparing to leave Earth forever? For that matter, who exactly was Cash Ryan in the first place?

Walker does a great job of world building here. Everyone's life is under constant surveillance from public cameras and from their own 'interface' (think smartphone but much better) devices. But even so, it is still impossible to get to know the man Cash had been.

To complicate things more, the chief suspect, Elana, who had had an affair with Cash on Earth years ago, is a potential love interest of Helt's. She and Helt had met the day before the murder and it was attraction at first sight. The underlaying story of their growing affection for each other, while Helt is trying to keep her at arm's length as he investigates the murder was, I want to say, charming.

The story moved a bit slowly at times, but this was to fill in details about "Kybele" and the political and environmental situation on Earth that had led to the the building of the ship in the first place. Mostly done in background, but useful for understanging the motivation of the people on board and why they wanted to be there.

The resolution of the murder was satisfactory. I was afraid, since this is science fiction, that some sic-fi device was going to end up solving the crime, but the author didn't go there. The final unravaling of the mystery was quite wrapped up in the history and goveranance of the ship however, which also was sastifactory.

Althought the story was wrapped up, there seems like there could be more stories in this ship and I hope that Walker plans a sequel. ( )

This book had a lot of great, imaginative world-building, but the plot unfolded too slowly for my taste and I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style. I think this makes for a serviceable science fiction novel but could use a little "sprucing up" in the pacing department.

[NOTE: I received an ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.] ( )