People often try to be someone else on holiday, don't they? When they're away from home. Away from the people who know them. And we are far, far away.
The Launch Party
by Lauren Forry
Genre: Mystery
About: Ten strangers win the chance of a lifetime: a two weeks stay on the moon's first luxury hotel. But when they arrive they find themselves even more alone than they expected. With no sign of any staff around they have to fend for themselves, and tensions soon explode after one of the ten is discovered murdered.
Help is three days away. A murderer is on the loose. And the first victim won't be the last...
Thoughts
I really liked the set-up for this. A murder mystery on the moon, in a creepy luxury hotel, with no access to the outside world/tech and locked in with nine strangers? That's a winning formula and I was definitely interested.
Unfortunately I wasn't too impressed with the execution. The characters read just very flat to me. They all have secrets and come from various backgrounds, but I don't know if it was the dialogue or the way the characters had a habit of talking to themselves when they were alone, but they didn't feel real. I won't go into all ten of the characters but the worst for me were Frau Richter and Uchida. Frau Richter, despite this being set presumably in the future, describes a black character as a 'monkey let out of the zoo' and that's given to us almost immediately after the first murder. There's no subtlety, it's just blatant racism from the get-go and continues. Her character could have been a lot more sinister if her racism had been less overt. Making her sound like she's stepped out of the 1950s when they're on the literal moon was an odd choice.
Uchida is another stereotype, this time of a billionaire. His outrages sounded so exaggerated (e.g. complaining about not having breakfast served directly to his suite when it's obvious there's no staff around). In fact I would have been far more interested in seeing the hotel with the staff around. Uchida's interactions with the staff and his different treatment from the rest of the guests would have added an interesting dynamic.
Minor things that took me out of the story were instances like when Alison gets Neil Armstrong's name incorrect (on a trip to the moon?), or when Uchida claims he went to bed at 3am, 'slept the whole night', and then woke up at 5am... Or the detective being proud of her offline presence that meant she hadn't looked into the terrorist threat before going into space.
Most of the things I didn't like about the story or the inconsistences would have meant nothing if I'd been pulled in by the characters. But I wasn't. Finding out the murderer and their motivations at the end was so unsatisfying. I'd suspected the right person, but there weren't clues throughout the text to give the reader a chance to work out the motive and the motive was pretty unbelievable. The lengths this person went to for 'revenge' really defied belief and how they were helped along with their plan was also bizarre.
Overall, the relationships did not feel like real life, the character development was weak (mostly this was simply the detective overcoming an itinerary of her fears) and no-one had a strong presence. The mystery element does keep you turning the pages and the setting is for sure a great hook, but I was disappointed in how the story ultimately played out.
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