Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapter 20

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.

Last time the power was out but now we’ve got fires. Whether that was intentional on the hacker’s part or some side benefit of shutting down the Academy computer we can’t currently say. It’s not like the murderer cares who else gets killed.

Thus far this has been a good Star Trek story but it has taken awhile for the mystery to finally take center stage. It’s not like we have a huge list of suspects and we can eliminate (pardon the expression) anyone from the show. We set up some potential motivations but we’re about to see how they come into play, or at least we will if all the new distractions don’t slow the mystery down. The story itself has been fine and doesn’t feel slowed down, but the murder mystery promised hasn’t really had a chance to be at the forefront. Now with the murderer slowing the investigation I have to wonder how much of the murder story the author came up with before starting this story. Her various Star Trek novels are all I’m aware.

I am enjoying the story. It’s a good story. It’s just for a murder story there’s more character than murder. Then again, I’m not much of a murder detective novel reader and only picked this up because I enjoyed the sequel book, so maybe this is how things usually go. Maybe some of the novelists or detective novel readers in the readership can tell me where I’m being a moron to fill out the homepage. That’s accomplished and I think the fire’s out, so let’s see what our heroes come up with next.

The fire is out but the treatment of the firefighters begins. The chapter starts with the evacuation of the patients during the fire, including finding ways to move patients that shouldn’t be moved, dealing with the existing patients requiring respirators, a lot of MacGyver-approved methods of not only getting patients out but getting some of the firefighters into triage. It was quite thorough, and credit to the author for that.

The “firefighters” of course include Sarek, Spock, and Kirk. Spock has internal bleeding and that means McCoy, who has a history of treating Spock from previous injuries to blood transfusion with his father to putting his brain back into his head and connecting everything (not one of the best episodes by a long shot, but if you’ve not been exposed to classic Trek and yet saw the “brain and brain, what is brain” clip, that’s Spock’s brain from the fittingly named episode “Spock’s Brain” they’re talking about), so he’s the right man for the job. Kirk just has s shock and smoke inhalation.

Interestingly, one of McCoy’s reasoning for being the one to help Spock despite being his friend is that it will give him more incentive to treat the half-Vulcan. I can understand treating a half-human/half-Vulcan as being the doctor there with the most experience, but I thought standard procedure was to not treat family and friends due to potential lack of objectivity or something. Otherwise, he is still the most experienced doctor with a patient like Spock and so the right doc for the job.

I’m guessing McCoy hasn’t met Eleyna before because the girl working the food and drink table is not named. I don’t think the narrator was trying to hide her identity by calling her the pretty blonde girl, but she’s revealed (yet still not named) when she reacts to the unconscious Sarek being brought in. I wonder if her being there is supposed to be a surprise, but I found more evidence against her. Because she was never named in this chapter I went back to her introduction in the book to see if she was in fact blonde, confirming this is Eleyna. That’s when I noticed something I forgot that makes me wonder if reading a mystery a chapter at a time is to my benefit as a reader.

At the end of Chapter 2, Sarek sees a program that requires a cartridge (old Trek was created during the days when cartridges in the 1960s were still considered the handheld storage system of choice, thanks I guess to 8-tracks, though they act more like floppy disks that wouldn’t be introduced for a couple of decades) he doesn’t have. The program connects to the Academy medical computer, and Sarek assumes she’s checking on Amanda as well. This also the chapter where we learn about human females chasing Vulcan professors because Vulcan men don’t mature as fast sexually as human ones. So add that to her suspicious activities along with flirting with Kirk as he begins his investigation after shooting him down earlier.

I almost forgot to mention Daniel being hurt trying to hold down a Lemnorian patient. The patient is strong enough to hold off a number of Vulcans. Vulcans are stronger than humans, and the chapter makes a note that even six are barely strong enough to hold him down while a seventh, Sorel, administers a sedative. Then again, would Vulcans have the same strength on their native planet they do in Earth level gravity? Isn’t the change in gravity why Vulcans appear stronger than humans in this franchise usually? This only seems to be here to show T’Mir is concerned about Daniel but really doesn’t expound on the current damage to their relationship.

So the only movement on the murder mystery is caused by me having to go back to double check a hair color. Our three investigators are now down for the count, Spock getting the worse of it, and Amanda is still in danger. The story is getting some interesting stuff, but the murder mystery is really feeling like an afterthought at this point. It was halfway through the novel before the cast knew there were murders. If the book had simply been titled Trouble At The Vulcan Academy, we the reader wouldn’t even know there was a murder involved until the halfway mark, and we’re nearing the third quarter mark with little going on with the investigation. It’s a great story thus far, but I’m flashing back to the DC Scooby-Doo comics that were fun stories but terrible mysteries. At least this has more to discuss than those comics did so I can keep reviewing this happily. I just want the promised murder mystery to finally matter as the main feature of the story.