A friend recommended Jack McDevitt to me -- and it is truly a gift to be given a new author who turns out to be compatible. I picked up Jack McDevitt's Polaris and was very pleasantly surprised by this well written mystery cum sci-fi novel. Now, this is not great literature, but Polaris is an engaging story, well written, with a couple of very well-drawn and very interesting characters. The mystery is better than fair and the sci-fi is quite well done -- and not over-done (by overdone I typically mean sci-fi with too many made up names with lots of strung together odd consonants and lots of strange alien creatures).
This mystery is narrated by our protagonist -- a savvy, smart woman with a great sense of irony and a very dry sense of humor. McDevitt does a pretty good job of presenting a far human future (say 2,000 years from now) that is recognizable but enough different and with enough good ideas about what it might contain to keep the reader interested. His main chararcter, Chase Kolpath, is interesting and intriguing and worth the sequel that this book pretty much guarantees would be a good idea.
I plan on reading more of McDevitt and I recommend him to you.
Comments