And now, as Rocky (of & Bullwinkle fame) would say, for something completely different. American novelist and blogger John Scalzi has taken a break from his long-running Old Man’s War series to pen a diverting stand-alone near-future sci-fi detective thriller.

My full review ran in the WFP yesterday. The five-syllable or less summary: it’s pretty good. The top spot for Scalzi novels I still assign to Old Man’s War itself, but that’s a pretty difficult one to dislodge, so that’s no sleight. After all, I put it in a category with Heinlein’s original Starship Troopers and Haldeman’s brilliant The Forever War, august but appropriate company, to be sure.