BSI-Starside: Final Inquiries
By Roger MacBride Allen
Bantam Spectra, 2008
Paperback, $6.99
421 pages
If you’re looking for something light, not too disturbing, that combines police procedurals with speculative science fiction, this may be worth picking up.
“Final Inquiries” seems to be the second in a series about a couple of “space-cops,” as it were, in an organization called the Bureau of Special Investigations, which has the duty of looking into crimes involving humans outside of the Earth system and those that involve interactions between humans and alien intelligent beings.
Allen is the spouse of a U.S. Foreign Service operative, and he uses that experience to build interesting details into this particular work, involving high-stakes interstellar diplomacy and death.
The human heroes of the story are Hannah Wolfson, the senior BSI agent, and Jamie Mendez. (Romance isn’t really a factor in this story.)

Another major player is Brox 231, effectively their functional counterpart for the Kendari, a “Young” (like the humans) race of four-legged, two-armed, wolf-like beings.
There’d be no point in citing humans and Kendari as “Young Races,” if there weren’t “Elder Races” of sentient beings considered to be more highly evolved, and Allen spills much ink describing a particular Elder Race, the Vixa, who have a highly structured — both socially and biologically — caste system.
At the bird’s eye level, the world Allen paints seems allegorical to the relationship between first-world and third-world cultures, which is a common theme in science fiction, particularly in the “space opera” genre, into which I think this tome neatly fits.
I admit that for light entertainment, I do enjoy more positive pictures of the future (e.g., Star Trek) than bleak visions (e.g., “Brave New World,” “1984”).
I really only have one complaint about this work: The characters talk too much and act too little.

As you might think with a “police procedural,” the heroes do have to interview people at length, but it’s not really necessary, I think, to quote so much conversation. A more judicious use of paraphrasing is indicated, I think.

When the action does happen, though, it works well. I found myself riveted and cheering inside.

As for the mystery, it’s not too difficult to figure out. It’s not Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the library, but it’s close enough.