The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
A murder mystery set on a space station, what could be
finer? When the detectives are Tesla Crane, a brilliant and extremely wealthy
inventor with an array of PTSD and physical injuries, her service dog, and her
real-life (although retired) detective husband, Shal. No sooner do they embark
incognito upon their honeymoon voyage than a fellow passenger is murdered and
all clues point to Shal. The ship’s security cuts off their communications (to
their Earthside attorney, for one thing, and to one another, for another). Only
then do things start to go seriously pear-shaped.
For me, what makes The Spare Man stand out from
similar tales is its depiction of a disabled protagonist. Tesla faces the
limitations of crippling spinal damage, an implanted pain-suppression device,
and the risks of having her trauma re-triggered. She has an array of coping
strategies, the most outstanding of which is her service dog, a Westland
terrier named Gimlet. As the former owner of a retired seeing eye dog and
friend to a number of folks who rely on service dogs (as opposed to the badly
behaved pets that sometimes pass as such), I appreciated how Kowal portrayed a
service dog at work. These included how Gimlet was “on work” or “released” to
be just a dog, and when working, how she was focused on Tesla and her
specifically trained behaviors to alert her owner of impending trouble.
Sometimes, the dog would physically prevent Tesla from engaging in emotionally
perilous behavior. I cheered when another character would ask to pet this
absolutely charming dog and Tesla would say, “No, she’s working. If you pet
her, you will interrupt her focus.” I wish more people understood this before
they walk up to a vested service dog and start interacting without asking first
(or, worse yet, allow their toddlers to rush up to a service dog!)
Unfortunately, the mystery unfolded too slowly for me, with
many interruptions that dissipated the tension and forward momentum. Halfway
through the novel, I began to be increasingly irritated with Tesla. Her
propensity for interfering with the investigation by the ship’s security, ignoring
her service dog (including leaving her dog behind and going into dangerous
situations), dialing up her pain-suppression device at the very real risk of
injury through numbness, and especially lying to her husband about being fine
when it was obvious she was not fine, all these eroded my sympathies. I
thought her lawyer was overhyped and ineffective, although possessed of an
extremely colorful and imaginative vocabulary. I had a hard time moving past a
point fairly early in the book where Shal has been drugged, probably by the
security force who are holding him against his will under the pretext he is a
suicide risk. I would have been terrified this was all a set-up to do away with
him as the only competent investigator around, but Tesla blithely goes about
her way, following clues in a desultory fashion only when it suits her.
In the end, the resolution of the mystery was quite
satisfying and put together a wide array of clues. Some of these had gotten
buried under inconsequential chit-chat about how cute Gimlet is, not to mention
the excessive repetitions of Tesla’s coping strategies (if she’s that
successful in using them, why does she end up on the verge of an incapacitating
meltdown so often?) This would have been a much better, tighter, more
dramatically sound book at half the length.
I loved Kowal’s other work and will continue to read her
books as they come out, but The Spare Man was, alas, not up to her best.
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