A slightly dated but enjoyable lightweight SF novel, the first in the Jan Darzek series. Interestingly, Jan is introduced in the second chapter. The first chapter and nearly half of this short novel features an engineer named Ted Arnold. Ted is fairly colorless, so it's not surprising that Darzek returned for future stories, despite knowing no science. Instead, he is a classic detective -- observant, unflappable, and occasionally slightly annoying. The initial setup is more like a locked room mystery -- how are people disappearing in transit in a new teleportation system when there's only here and there? The book has dated when it comes to portraying women, business, and aliens. The feeling is more 1940s than the book's 1963 publication date, with a whiff of Heinlein.

Recommended for lovers of classic SF. ( )

bello, bello. consigliato ( )

This might not be one of my all-time favourite books but it's still right up there. Written in the early 60s (it's older than me!), it's set in the then future of the 1980s.

When a tech start up determines that there has been sabotage of their technology demonstrators their CTO calls in his best friend and private investigator Jan Darzek to look into it. What Jan finds out is that the saboteurs are in fact aliens rather than Earthbound miscreants. It appears that there is a galactic federation that has a watch station in the Solar System making sure that Earth doesn't develop transmitter technology, along with a number of other things. When Universal Transmitting goes operational, an inexperienced team leader panics and authorises the acts of sabotage and disappearances that had attracted Darzek's attention. Following a suspect through one of UT's transmitters he finds himself on the moon and in a fit of panic he destroys much of the alien base, leaving the observers and himself stuck in a cargo bay with limited life support. As they all prepare to meet death in their own fashion Darzek gains a deeper understanding of the aliens (not that he really understands it - they are alien after all!). All this is brought to a head when a Transmitter equipped moon base is established in the crater where the alien base had been and Darzek has to persuade the aliens that they can all get out of their situation without revealing themselves to the humans.

Inevitably bits of the book now sound dated but we're more than 30 years after the proposed date of the action, not to mention over 50 from when it was written! Unfortunately, many of the attitudes it goes in to are still problems these days ( )

In my quest to review Classic SF I've discovered some pretty good writers with whom I was not familiar. Lloyd Biggle Jr. is one.

This book is decent 60s SF. I enjoyed it more then I expected. It's my first Biggle book and I will look for more. I give average books three stars. This one gets 4 because the author surprised me with a couple of good twist. ( )

Although the main character in this book is a detective, the story isn't really a mystery. It starts out as an engineering problem and develops into a first contact story. I enjoyed it when I stopped waiting for the mystery. ( )