Money makes the world go round, as can a few too many drinks. But when Benny, in a fit of sobriety, agrees to do a pre-Advent favour for Irving, little does she suspect that a bit of corporate schmoozing with a savoury snack magnate will lead her into the biggest spin she’s experienced for a very long time. In a whistle-stop tour of frontier planets, she encounters mysterious burials, guns and swords, legs and claws, lost treasure, mortal combat and conspiracy. Oh, and love and war, again. Meanwhile, Jack has to tackle possibly the most irritating computer virus ever created, and Ruth must clamber through the bowels of a crashed ship with “The Man with the Vulpine Tattoo”. And this was supposed to be the holiday season...?

In my review of the audio drama box set New Frontiers, which this book accompanies (taking place between the stories A Handful of Dust and HMS Surprise), I suggested that a more fitting title for the collection would have been Advent or Ghost Stories. Well, I would now like to add Distress Signals to the pile of suggestions, since, in common with A Handful of Dust and HMS Surprise, a major plot strand of this novel is set in motion by the receipt of an interstellar SOS.

That, however, is but one thread of this book, which seems to have a plot for each of its two authors, James Parsons and Andrew Stirling-Brown. At first, it may appear as though the pages of two unrelated Bernice Summerfield novellas have been accidentally shuffled together, with alternating chapters telling two very different tales – one of them a fight for life aboard a doomed spacecraft, the other a chronicle of corporate skulduggery on a planet of archaeological interest. The authors tip us the wink that there is a connection via the device of beginning each chapter with the same words that had ended the previous one, though in an entirely different context.

It took me a while to get into this format, but the intrigue and mortal peril kick in about one-third of the way through, and we do get the answers we need towards the end of the book. Chapters of varying lengths allow the reader to spend more time with certain groups of characters when narrative peaks occur, which helps to prevent plotlines from going off the boil. The chapter titles are all money-related, ranging from the fairly obvious “Danger Money” to the song-based “Too Tight to Mention” and the pun-tastic “Squids In!”

My enjoyment was slightly marred by some annoying and/or amusing typos, such as damming when the authors mean damning, pigeon in place of pidgin, and relieve rather than relive. It also appears that the supply of commas has been rationed.

Another slip-up affects Stuart Manning’s cover design, which is somewhat at odds with the descriptions in the book. The nearest shore on the planet Oxyrincus is said to be several kilometres away, while the creatures that attack Bernice and co are described as being half-squid half-lobster, not just giant lobsters as shown on the cover.

Still, if you’re a fan of Bernice’s adventures, this novel is worth spending your lucre (filthy or otherwise) on.

6

Richard McGinlay