The Prefect

A full-length novel set in the Revelation Space universe that's "sublime entertainment" and "gripping in the extreme."( Locus)

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds.

His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that leaves nine hundred people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus. But then his investigation uncovers something even more potentially dangerousa covert plot by an enigmatic entity seeking nothing less than total control of the Glitter Band

"The seventh novel set in Reynolds's Revelation Space milieu (most recently encountered in his 2007 collection Galactic North) is a fascinating hybrid of space opera, police procedural and character study. One of the 10,000 colony habitats of the utopian Glitter Band has been destroyed, and title character Tom Dreyfus, a cop who patrols the Glitter Band beat, is assigned to learn whodunit and why. Meanwhile, his protg, Thalia Ng, shepherds a supposedly minor series of software upgrades on several other habitats, while Dreyfus's superiors oust their leader, ostensibly for her own good. Reynolds unfolds revelations layer by onionskin layer, supplying enough detail to imply a novel's worth of unwritten backstory without ever obscuring the stakes and personalities. The high-quality characterization more than compensates for the slightly too shadowy villains. This is solid British SF adventure, evoking echoes of le Carr and Sayers with a liberal dash of Doctor Who. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St. Andrew's Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. He is a former astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. He is now writing full-time.