A Talent For War by Jack McDevitt
July 2018 - I have just finished reading A Talent For War, the first of 4 science fiction books that make up the Alex Benedict Series.
Interestingly, although this book was written in 1989, the other books in the series were written much later:
Polaris (2004)
Seeker (2005)
The Devil's Eye (2008)
Here's the blurb:
Alex Benedict learns that his uncle, who raised him, has disappeared along with several hundred other people aboard a space space headed for a remote location. His uncle leaves him the entire estate, along with the mystery that consumed his life before his disappearance. But Alex isn't the only one trying to solve the ancient puzzle of what happened to the Confederacy's most admired war hero and the other parties involved are much more ruthless.
How can I describe it - a traditional detective story set in a science fiction future.
I do like fantasy write Orson Scott-Card and his review of McDevitt's books is glowing (see http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2012-02-09.shtml). He writes
McDevitt's sci-fi mystery series about Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath was a delight from first to last -- because, of course, it took only one novel for me to be hooked and read them all. The heroes are Alex Benedict, a dealer in antiquities who has more in common with Heinrich Schliemann or Indiana Jones or Thor Heyerdahl than with your garden-variety archaeologist or antiques dealer. And since the novels take place thousands of years from now, in an era when humans have settled on many worlds and travel between them in faster-than-light vehicles, the concept of "antiquity" means that Benedict is exploring a past that to us is still a far-distant future.
Highly recommended as a read. Now I have to find time to read the further 3 books.
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