This is the third in Malka Older's 'Mossa and Pleiti' series and it's the first where both these leads contribute to the investigation at hand in somewhat equal measure. Don't get me wrong, I loved the first novella, 'The Mimicking of Known Successes', but Mossa was clearly the Investigator and Pleiti had other things to contribute. That continued into the less successful second volume, 'The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles' but is appropriately shifted here. The goal appears to be for the two of them to set up in private practice, but that's something for a future book.

The template is clearly Holmes and Watson. For all that these books are obviously science fiction, predominantly set on platforms constructed above the surface of Jupiter (or Giant, as it's known), because we're in the future and we've rendered the Earth uninhabitable, they're also very overtly Victorian mysteries. The balance between the past and the future, often telling us in the process something about our present, is one of the aspects I like the most about the series. This time, the specific template is 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' because, for quite a while, it seems to be all on Pleiti, for once, until she finally realises that Mossa's been there all along.

The mystery at hand doesn't seem to be as urgent, which makes it a good one for Pleiti to tackle, as she has no official investigative credentials. Villette is up for a donship in Stortellen, but she's been accused, anonymously I should add, of falsifying data, which makes this a reputational issue without a single corpse to be found. Pleiti is brought in by Villette's sister Petanj, who travels the two days to Valdegeld to ask for her help; they went to university here at the same time, though Pleiti was a Classicist and Petanj a Modern.

Of course, she doesn't come to specifically ask for Pleiti's help but to hint towards Mossa's, as she is an official Investigator. However, Pleiti can't talk her girlfriend into anything, let alone lead an investigation. Their relationship appears to be broken and Mossa is frustratingly abrupt with her when she asks. Pleiti later realises that it has to be Jovian melancholy, as Victorian an ailment as it sounds like even if it's tied to this future setting, but she doesn't realise it until she's there, two days away in Stortellen; so the pressure of leading an investigation herself is combined by guilt for not staying behind to care for Mossa.

What we have to remember is that, even if Mossa is Holmes and Pleiti is Watson, the template is taken from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so the latter isn't the bumbling fool he often became in Hollywood movies. He's a very capable professional man, merely from a different profession, as is Pleiti, as long as we adjust that statement for gender. She merely feels like a fish out of water, because she's a scholar leading an investigation, a Classicist amongst Moderns and, of course, a sidekick without her lead. So she does what she can and, while she constantly feels it's frustratingly inadequate, it isn't.

And Mossa tells her so, when she finally twigs that the Stortellen porter that reminds her so much of Mossa is indeed Mossa in disguise, at which point we're back on more familiar territory with the pair of them working as a double act. The secrecy does give Mossa a lot of freedom of movement, without whoever's behind these attempts to discredit Villette realising that an Investigator is on the case. They can ignore the efforts of the Classicist from Valdegeld a lot easier than they would ignore the efforts of an official trained and licensed Investigator. Hilariously, Mossa even made it to Stortellen first.

By the way, these attempts do escalate into real danger, not that the book was dry and scholarly even when it was just about an academic reputation. Someone clearly doesn't want Villette to be made a don, though they stubbornly refuse to make their reasoning clear. Are they professionally jealous, perhaps because she's so young but already so advanced? Is this mere bigotry, some sort of ism, given that the Dean is an absolute ass? Is there a personal reason, given that Villette is an eminently desirable woman for reasons other than her brain? Is there a commercial reason, given that she's invented a nasal filter to replace atmoscarfs and wants everyone to benefit? But being an obstacle to advancement is one thing; starting a gas leak and blowing up her lab is another.

Of course, everything becomes clear in the end and I appreciated how Malka Older gets us there. This is a far more focused mystery than the first book and a more engaging one than the second but it's also a more traditional one than either, spent in busier places with more suspects and an obvious glee in dropping clues for us that may help or hinder. It benefits from additional length, a factor that surely makes this an actual novel rather than a novella like the first. I wasn't entirely sure which bucket the second would fit into but there's no doubt here. This runs over two hundred and fifty pages and relishes that breathing room.

The only catch this time is one that I've mentioned before and personally don't consider to be too much of a catch, but I'd be shocked if many readers wouldn't disagree with me. Certainly, it came up when the CASFS Book Social tackled 'The Mimicking of Known Successes'. That's Older's use of a lot of unusual words, some obscure but most foreign and often accented. Some of their meanings are clear from context but many aren't, because they're far more likely to be actions than things and are occasionally isolated. "I mueca'd" apparently means "I grimaced in disgust."

I'm a fan of vocabulary and often find that when authors do this sort of thing, I recognise much of what they throw in. One reason I like Cassandra Khaw's 'Nothing But Blackened Teeth' more than many readers is because I understood a lot of the Japanese terms that she used without providing explanation. However, Older catches me out almost every time because, whatever Spanish words I know she doesn't use. Here, I think it was more obvious because I didn't notice it much at all until a certain point, soon into the second half, when suddenly new words were everywhere.

Within thirty pages, I learned a lot of Spanish: "gruñed", "chévere", "chisme", "panza", "pálido", "recamera", "insólitos", "afición", "mueca" and "risueño". However, "gezellig" is Dutch and both "blague" and "événement" French. Also, while these words tend to have simple translations easy to look up online, I'm sure they also have deeper cultural subtexts that I'm entirely missing. Why does Older use "événement" instead of "evento" or simply "event"? Is she trying to look fancy? I don't buy that. She's endowing that instance with a particular nuance that I sadly don't see.

And so my problem with the language isn't that Older uses a slew of unusual or foreign words. It's that looking them up doesn't necessarily give me what I need to grasp her full meaning, which is a good part of the reason to look them up in the first place. Otherwise, skipping over them seems a waste. Now, I should add that if you're a reader who doesn't like this sort of thing and you always skip over words you don't understand, then there's still a strong mystery to devour with oodles of character. I may like the first more for different reasons, but I'd still call this the best of the three. I hope the series runs to many more volumes. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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