Originally I was attracted to the book because as a polar bear myself, the word ‘polar’ caught my eye. After I picked the book up and read the first couple pages, I knew that the book was going to be a good choice. The opening pages lead with a mysterious murder, not of a human but of an alien ambassador. As someone who thoroughly enjoys the murder mystery type story I decided to choose Polar City Blues. One of the first characters we read about also has the name Ward, and even though he does not play a huge role in the story, seeing the name made me believe that I had picked the right book.
The book takes place in what seems to be the future with the advanced technology and interstellar mixing. The human race has been mixed with two different alien species. As mentioned before, the book is centered around a murder by an unknown being. While a murder is never a good thing, this is terrible timing. The tension between the two alien species have been raising over the past year and they are on the brink of war. The lead detective put on the case is Bobbie Lacey. Lacey seems to be an upstanding detective and the best option they have to solve it. Lacey chooses her partner to be her less than wonderful wannabe professional baseball played, Mulligan. While he is not a cop or detective, he is able to help with the case by going into situations that a cop, who has to be law abiding, could never go. Mulligan, pretty early on in the story finds that he has a telepathic connection to some alien species that is not one of the ones living among humans. The murder of the first alien ambassador it turns out was due to a new type of bacteria. This bacteria eats away at its target. (If you choose to read any further in this paragraph there will be some spoilers, although I will try to summarize without giving everything away. You can also choose to go to the next paragraph to avoid them). The team is able to trace the bacteria to an assassin and while this does solve the surface level of who murdered the ambassador, it brings about the question of who hired this assassin. We eventually learn that the same alien species that is having telepathic communication with Mulligan hired the assassin to raise tension between the other alien species so that they would be able to swoop in and take over their systems. The end deals with a rather large chase that ends with Lacey finding the evidence needed to show that it was indeed a foreign party that caused the murder and diffusing the tensions between the two ruling species.
This is cyberpunk sci-fi. The opening scenes of Polar City shows that it is pretty dumpy. There are a lot of street worker and general filth. There are also a lot of new technologies that help solve the crimes, including some AI’s.
One of the things that I noticed in this book compared to other sci fi stories or books is that the female is the hero. Lacey and Mulligan make quite the pair, and while they are equally important, Lacey is clearly the stronger more put together character. She is a strong smart well respected detective and Mulligan is seen as an alcoholic who wants to play baseball. It feels like a Disney story where the princess needs saving, except the princess is Mulligan and along with needing to save his life she also helps him with daily interactions and helps him become respected by people who thought he was just an alcoholic.
The story was entertaining. It was not exactly what I was hoping for, but overall entertaining. It became more a thriller than a mystery. I would recommend this book to friends. Even though at times I did have trouble following exactly what was happening, especially early on with the telepathic communication, the story was engaging. I would give it a 6.5/10.
Kerr, Katharine. Polar City Blues. Bantam, 1990.