MixedTor.com\"John Varley’s Irontown Blues is the third volume in a loosely connected trilogy set in one version of his Eight Worlds ... Considered as a detective novel…the problem isn’t that Bach is terrible at his job. He unravels the clues quickly enough. If he is not as careful as he should be, neither were his role models. It’s more that Smith and her compatriots have chosen a pretty baroque path to their goals for reasons that, when explained, were not as convincing to this reader as they could have been. Granting that the faction in question has already been established as a conclave of eccentrics, surely there was a better way? But at least there’s Sherlock, smarter than his owner credits and even more determined than Bach. Bach may be but a pawn in a deadly game, but his faithful dog is at least a knight.
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