Review: Mortal Mission, by Pip Skinner

Blurb 

Astronauts are dying on the first crewed mission to Mars. Is it bad luck, or something far more sinister?

An international mission to search for life on Mars meets heated opposition from the religious right in the USA. Astronaut Hattie Fredericks’ dreams are realised when she is selected for the voyage, but her presence on the Starship coincides with a series of incidents which threaten to derail the mission.

After a near-miss while landing on Mars, the world watches as Hattie and the crew struggle to survive. But worse than the harsh elements are her suspicions that someone is trying to destroy the mission. After several crew members die, Hattie doesn’t know who to trust. And her only allies are 35 million miles away.

As the tension ratchets up, violence and suspicion invade both worlds.

Will Hattie discover life on Mars, or die trying?

Buy Links

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My Review

Thanks to Pip Skinner for sending a copy of this book and to the team at Love Books Tours for organising the blog tour.

Oh my goodness me! I have had a fabulous, tense few hours in space with Hattie!

On Earth a journalist wants to get a scoop on the new Mars mission, but he gets more than he could ever hope for as astronauts start dying and malfunctions mount up. Religious fanatics seem to be to blame, but how are they killing people, who is the rat-faced man, and who is the inside man?

Aboard the Starship carrying Hattie and her seven colleagues, tensions build as people start dying. It gets worse when they get to Mars and secrets leak out. Who is killing astronauts?

I enjoyed this book. I thought I would from the blurb but it took me about a sixth of the way (page 59 of 295) into it to really get gripped, but once it did I couldn’t put it down. Some of the writing was a little heavy handed, but nothing some light editing wouldn’t fix, and since I have an ARC, I presume that’s been done.

It was tense and well-paced. The author knows how to build tension and release it at the right moment. The novel had the feeling of a ‘Golden Age’ murder mystery, but set in the future, in space. It definitely works for me.

I liked the characters of Hattie, Grace, Gina and Chuck. Gina and Chuck remind me of characters from 50s detective novels, all grit and swagger. I was quite worried they’d get arrested and blamed, and that the villains would get away with it. Hattie and Grace are lovely, and their sibling relationship works well. The developing relationship between Hattie and Scottie was so subtle too, and not graphic.

The relationships between the astronauts as they deal with the knowledge that there’s a murderer in their midst, and their secrets are revealed one by one, is well-written. I thought all the characters were well written, and was pretty certain of the murderer after Mo’s death. I was right, but it’s probably from experience of reading lots of murder mysteries. The clues are there when you know what to look for. I wasn’t expecting what happened though, I thought they’d get caught before…no spoilers! The last couple of chapters were gripping, a race for survival across Mars, and an arrest on Earth! Very thrilling reading.

I love it when geologists write fiction; you can rely on them to get the geology right. Especially the bit about fine layers, mudstone, what river sediments look like under a microscope…