One Way by S.J.Morden Review

“Eight astronauts, one killer, no way home”. The cover of One Way doesn’t shy away from letting you know what’s going to happen later in the book, and yet that doesn’t ruin what is a very enjoyable Mars-based part sci-fi, part murder mystery story whereby seven criminals locked up for life are trained and sent up to Mars on a mission to build the very first settlement, ready for NASA to rock up and start doing their thing once all the hard work is done.

The main focus of the book is on Frank, a guy who should be spending his life behind bars for killing his son’s drug dealer. But he, as well as six other similarly imprisoned men and women is persuaded into accepting this mission to Mars, mainly on the grounds that it’ll be a bit of a change of scenery. Accompanying them is Brack, an employee of Xenosystems, the company who won the contract from NASA. He’s immediately unlikeable, but then I’d assume that’s the point; he’s there to be keeping a bunch of criminals in check so he’s hardly going to be playing party music for them or welcoming them back from the Martian desert with cake and biscuits.

Having completed training and reaching Mars in one piece, things soon start going wrong. The base itself is largely fine, but the people… well, not so much. Initially the deaths appear to be accidents, but as if the book’s cover hadn’t let you in on the secret that’s not quite how things pan out. What follows is a mystery of who’s doing the killing as each member of the team is bumped off in various ways, and while I had my suspicions I was never overly certain as to just who it was until it became crystal clear towards the end. There were just enough uncertainties planted throughout to make me question my thoughts, which is a pretty cool way of writing a story like this.

I don’t know if it’s my love of all things space, or the fact that this seemed pretty new to me in terms of things I’ve read before, but I really enjoyed this. I wondered at the end of some pages were missing as it stopped pretty suddenly, but by many accounts there’s a sequel in the making, so I’m fascinated to see how that pans out considering the way the book ends. Generally though this is a really exciting read, and kept me up far too late on numerous occasions as I ploughed through another chunk of the book, keen to see what happened in the coming pages.

So if you’re into mysteries, and like the idea of criminals trying to set up mankind’s best chance of interplanetary survival, take a look.