They are the elite agents of interstellar investigation. Their mission: solve off-Earth crimes and protect humanity’s starside interests. They are the men and women of the Bureau of Special Investigations—BSI—and their cases are literally out of this world. The message was garbled, but it appeared to be a simple enough request: escort a human prisoner convicted of murder back to Earth for punishment. But when BSI agents Jamie Mendez and Hannah Wolfson arrive on a planet settled by the enigmatic Pavlat, it seems that everyone is determined to kill them before they can complete their mission—or even find out what it is. And on a planet where murder is a time-honored tradition, Death is a cause everyone believes in. Mendez and Wolfson must find a way to untangle the web of Pavlavian intrigue obscuring the case and sort out what’s really going on. But there’s far more than just one man’s life at stake—and soon they’ll have a fresh murder to solve…