I'm so impressed with Star Trek publishing these days. The people at Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster have an understanding of the width and breadth of the Star Trek universe, and are publishing books that appeal to all kinds of fans across the board. For fans of mysteries and Star Trek, "The Case of the Colonist's Corpse" by Bob Ingersoll and Tony Isabella is a home run, a touchdown and a slam-dunk all rolled into one.

When the book arrived at my desk, I was at first hit with a sense of déja-vù: the cover looks just like one of those old Ellery Queen or Perry Mason paperback mysteries I remember from growing up (down to the fine-touch of the red ink along the page edges). But this is Star Trek, and it satisfies on all kinds of levels, first and foremost as a Star Trek book, but also as a mystery, as a chronicle of an early colony competing with Klingons in the wake of the Organian Peace Treaty, and as the first in what could be a delightful series of novels.

The Original Series-era story is, as the cover tells us, "A Sam Cogley Mystery." The genius of using Captain Kirk's eccentrically theatrical defense attorney from the TOS episode "Court Martial" is that Sam (and his assistants) can span the galaxy in pursuit of interesting cases, and like any good mystery, you never know whodunit until the end, but the clues have been there the whole time.

When the Aneher II colony's Administrator Daniel Latham is found dead with a Klingon standing over him with Latham's own phaser in his hand, it seems like an open-and-shut case, but like the volumes in Latham's study, one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. "The Case of the Colonist's Corpse" is Star Trek as it should be. If you've never read a Star Trek book, get this one and see what all the fuss is about.

[Paul]