Teaser

The people of Earth, Moon, and the Belt have gathered on the Moon for a vital conference, only for one of their number to be attacked. Whoever committed this crime faces death, and the redistribution of their organs . . .

Review

Technically the fourth Gil Hamilton story, The Patchwork Girl is Niven’s first full-length novel centred on the detective with the telepathic arm. If one can call a book that’s only 144 pages long, that is. They certainly don’t write them like they used to.

Other than the fact it’s set on the Moon (and with some worldbuilding that must surely have been an inspiration for The Expanse), this is a pretty standard detective novel. Hamilton just happens to be on the Moon when there’s a murder attempt, and quickly volunteers his services. there is only one suspect, but since Naomi Mitchison (probably named after Niven’s fellow SF writer) has a romantic history with Hamilton, he decides to go out of his way to prove her innocence. Naturally, there are complications aplenty, from personal struggles to political implications, before all is tied up in a bundle with a nice bow of exposition and leverage.

What sets The Patchwork Girl apart is the judicial system. Organlegging is an idea that Niven can’t keep his hands off, and this is one of the best sues for the idea. In our modern world, there is still a raging debate over the implementation of the death sentence. In the UK, it is no longer part of our legal system, but in the US it is, and was at the time of Niven’s writing. Niven imagines what might be done with an executed criminal. After all, it would be a shame to let those potentially life-saving organs go to waste, If you’ve just executed a murderer, why not use their lungs and heart to save two lives that would otherwise be lost? This is, in my personal opinion, a very reasonable idea. But Niven doesn’t stop there. He pushes the new system to it’s logical extent. If all executions lead to the saving of lives, why not increase the number of executions? Why not apply the death sentence to more crimes?

This might just be a short and fairly simple detective thriller, but its set against a fascinating backdrop of science fiction ideas. Set aside the space operatic and political drama between the different offshoots of humanity. Come back to that one idea. Should we look for a purpose beyond simple punishment when it comes to the death penalty? Can you justify executing petty criminals if it saves multiple lives? What happens when there are miscarriages of justice? You can’t undo a death sentence, after all. And you can’t take back organs that have been put into other people. Niven doesn’t answer all these problems. Nor should he. He does what he needs to do to get the reader thinking. the exact thing that science fiction has been doing for over a hundred years.

You can read this as a crime novel, and you’ll certainly get a kick out of doing so. But if you look beneath the covers, you’ll find something a whole lot more thought-provoking than you might expect from a detective solving crimes on the Moon with his ex-girlfriend.

Book Stats

• A Gil Hamilton Novel
• First Published 1980
• 144 Pages