The Big Sneep

Murder and romance are on the table when Gabriel Lake's big dinner date with his girlfriend, Sarah, is interrupted by the Galactic Detective Agency calling him once more to an adventure out among the stars. This time Sarah comes along for the wild and dangerous ride. The case takes them to a huge orbiting space colony called Sneep inhabited by a community of engineers who are genetically too serious-minded to get Gabe's jokes and far too law-abiding to ever commit crimes. Except now a killer is picking off the colony's best minds one after another. Can the Galactic Detective Agency, headed by the brilliant Oren Vilkas, piece together the clues in time to catch the murderer? Can Gabe and Sarah navigate this strange alien world and the pitfalls of a relationship at the same time? For that matter, will Gabe ever get to finish his dinner? Find out in The Big Sneep.


Q & A WITH THE AUTHOR


Q. Where did you get the idea for Sneep?

A. That's a real space settlement concept called an O'Neill cylinder, proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in 1976. Look it up. There are some fascinating drawings online. Arthur C. Clarke popularized the concept in his excellent novel Rendezvous with Rama. I added the idea of the sun tube to provide overhead sunlight all through the cylinder. The rest of it was just imagining what it would be like to be inside a place like that.


Q. Why call it Sneep?

A. All the book titles in the series except for A Town Called Potato are homages to detective or sci-fi movies. So The Big Sneep honors The Big Sleep, the great Raymond Chandler novel that was made into a great movie with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.


Q. How many more GDA books can we expect?

A. At least one. I've already started on Murder on the Girsu Express, which will bring back Lt. Xox to again lock horns with Gabriel Lake.


Q. Will Sarah again feature in coming books?

A. Maybe, but not in Murder on the Girsu Express other than a brief appearance. I have too many suspects and supporting characters to juggle, so I had to keep the GDA cast down to a minimum. After that, we'll have to wait and see. Where do they go from here?