Part of Series
The Barnes & Noble Review Alex Benedict and his executive assistant, Chase Kolpath—ambitious antiquities dealers from Jack McDevitt's A Talent for War (1989) and, more recently, Polaris—are back in Seeker, a story in which the two antiquarians search for a legendary lost colony that is both a science fiction thriller and a remarkably complex mystery. More than 9,000 years after an interstellar transport named Seeker left an overcrowded and politically repressive Earth with the dream of founding a new society on an unspecified planet, Benedict and Kolpath stumble across a ceramic cup that was once on the now-legendary lost starship. But tracking down how the ancient artifact got from the ship into the hands of a maltreated woman and her thuggish boyfriend turns out to be more than Benedict and Kolpath bargained for—as their search leads them across multiple star systems and straight into an anonymous assassin's crosshairs. But as the killer closes in, the two courageous antiquarians uncover the jaw-dropping truth about the lost starship and the legendary colony Equally reminiscent of Frederik Pohl's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Heechee saga (Gateway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, et al.) and a classic Ellery Queen mystery, McDevitt's Seeker will appeal to readers of hard-core science fiction, as well as adventurous mystery fans looking for an out-of-this-world story. And just like Polaris, Seeker is characterized by a bombshell of an ending that will leave readers absolutely awestruck. Paul Goat Allen
Author
Jack McDevitt is a former English teacher, naval officer, Philadelphia taxi driver, customs officer and motivational trainer. His work has been on the final ballot for the Nebula Awards for 12 of the past 13 years. His first novel, The Hercules Text, was published in the celebrated Ace Specials series and won the Philip K. Dick Special Award. In 1991, McDevitt won the first $10,000 UPC International Prize for his novella, "Ships in the Night." The Engines of God was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and his novella, "Time Travelers Never Die," was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. McDevitt lives in Georgia with his wife, Maureen, where he plays chess, reads mysteries and eats lunch regularly with his cronies.
