“If the Kirk-Spock era starship USS Enterprise had a few spinner-racks of pulp paperbacks in the lounge for recreational crew consumption, this material would fit right in.” — Kirkus Review “Get It Award” - 2025
ON THE LUXURY STARLINER DELPHI, A KILLER LURKS IN THE SHADOWS, WEAVING A DEADLY WEB OF DEATH
Inspector Avei Themis spent years chasing the galaxy’s most dangerous serial killers until a devastating mistake left twenty-two dead and nearly cost her life. Broken, riddled with guilt, and on the brink of resigning, Avei’s thrust into one last case: solving a mysterious murder aboard the starliner Delphi. The killer’s weapon - venomous alien spiders that deliver an excruciating death.
With the Delphi trapped in a wormhole and panic spreading as the bodies piled up, Avei must battle her shattered confidence and confront the demons of her past. As the clock ticks and a cunning predator exploits her every weakness, Avei faces a deadly question: Can she untangle the killer’s web fast enough before more die a terrible death?
THE STARLINER MURDERS is a pulse-pounding fusion of science fiction and mystery that will hook you from the first page and keep you guessing until its final, shocking twist.
“If the Kirk-Spock era starship USS Enterprise had a few spinner-racks of pulp paperbacks in the lounge for recreational crew consumption, this material would fit right in.” — Kirkus Review “Get It Award” - 2025
ON THE LUXURY STARLINER DELPHI, A KILLER LURKS IN THE SHADOWS, WEAVING A DEADLY WEB OF DEATH
Inspector Avei Themis spent years chasing the galaxy’s most dangerous serial killers until a devastating mistake left twenty-two dead and nearly cost her life. Broken, riddled with guilt, and on the brink of resigning, Avei’s thrust into one last case: solving a mysterious murder aboard the starliner Delphi. The killer’s weapon - venomous alien spiders that deliver an excruciating death.
With the Delphi trapped in a wormhole and panic spreading as the bodies piled up, Avei must battle her shattered confidence and confront the demons of her past. As the clock ticks and a cunning predator exploits her every weakness, Avei faces a deadly question: Can she untangle the killer’s web fast enough before more die a terrible death?
THE STARLINER MURDERS is a pulse-pounding fusion of science fiction and mystery that will hook you from the first page and keep you guessing until its final, shocking twist.
Avei Themis lay curled up on the couch, feet twisted in a blanket. Empty alcohol units littered the coffee table. Neon lights from neighboring skyscrapers swept the darkened living room in a dizzying array of colors, creating a surreal dreamscape. Icy rain hit the windows, and a long, low rumble of thunder reverberated through the towering city.
Clad only in a thin tank top and pajama shorts, Avei shivered and pushed herself up to untangle the blanket. After a feeble attempt, she gave up and fell back, rubbing her arms. She forced her eyes to remain fixed on the hover vehicles flying on the skyway two streets over. A muffled roar signaled the departure of another passenger shuttle as it rose from the Mernin Spaceport. The sleek vehicle caught her eye as it plowed through the swirling storm clouds on its way to the spacehub.
Avei felt the hypnotic pull of the holographic monitor floating nearby, displaying an image of her smiling alongside a young man and woman. She closed her eyes tight and burrowed her head into a cushion, knowing the effort was pointless.
Why do I keep torturing myself?
With a moan, her eyes opened, and she stared at the picture, taken on one of the happiest days of her life. The trio wore black uniforms and stood in front of a mirrored tower, home to the Mernin Security Forces. Tral and Ezo towered over Avei and pointed at her right arm with three woven gold slashes on the sleeve. A heaviness settled on her chest as grief swamped her, making it difficult to breathe. Tears filled her eyes. Her two best friends were dead because of her.
As the image faded, Avei sucked in a ragged breath. The next picture materialized; this time of her and a statuesque woman, laughing under a yellow bisphina tree covered in lavender blossoms. The sisters both had their mother’s purple hair and eyes, but only Anastasia had been lucky enough to inherit their mother’s height. She had often teased Avei about sharing their father’s petite stature, which had been supremely irritating at the time. Now Avei would give anything to hear her sister’s voice, teasing or not.
The tears started afresh as she clutched the holographic locket around her neck and held it tight, wondering if she would ever feel normal again.
Chapter 1
It had been three months since Avei had confronted a deranged serial killer known as Apollyona, having tracked her down to an abandoned warehouse. Avei had almost died in the ensuing fire. Now, while doctors said her physical injuries had almost healed, her emotional and spiritual wounds were another matter. The therapists implored her to forgive herself, fearing she might otherwise never recover. They called it survivor’s guilt. One even referred to her emotional state as complicated grief. Ridiculous. Yes, she was guilty. Guilty of murdering twenty people, including her two best friends.
She knew her apartment reeked of neglect. A plate of protein noodles in rich gravy sat congealing on the dining room table. Another forgotten dinner. Takeout containers from a dozen restaurants littered the kitchen counter, their odor confirming they’d been there a while. A hardened puddle of something brown covered the floor in front of the sink. It disgusted her, but not enough to muster the energy to clean it.
Once again, she’d spent the entire day lying on the couch and had accomplished not one damn thing.
Avei’s eyes drifted across the living room, which lacked any personal touches. No pictures on the wall, no knickknacks. Pathetic. She had bought the furnished apartment six years ago, with grand plans to spruce it up and make it her own. Given that she was currently curled up on the same scratchy couch that came with the unit, confirmed that had clearly never happened.
Avei wiped the tears from her face with the corner of her tank top. How did her home become this impersonal, transitory stop between cases?
Her mother said it was her oasis of neutrality from a life that dealt with evil and depravity every day. Possible.
Ezo had tried everything to get her to update her apartment and had even promised to help. Ezo was a genius with decorating and had refurbished her own place in the vibrant Jerdium style, where every color made an appearance but instead of overwhelming the senses, Ezo’s home felt warm and welcoming. Avei and Tral loved her place, and it had become their second home. Ezo never minded. She loved to entertain. Why didn’t I accept her offer?
Whenever Ezo brought up Avei’s insipid decor, Tral defended her. He’d say their job kept them off the planet most of the time, so why should Avei fill her rare downtime with something as frivolous as decorating? This from a guy whose place reeked of personality. A gaming holochair consumed half his living room and a beer fridge and snack cabinet filled the other half. He had arranged everything, so he never had to leave his chair. They suspected he even slept in that chair. Gods, I miss them so much.
Tral was right. Mernin Security Forces’ jurisdiction covered thirty-two planets, countless moons, and other less hospitable places. Wherever intelligent life flourished; be it human, alien, or hybrid, you found killers who developed a taste for taking a life. As a homicide inspector, Avei’s entire focus was on serial killers and bringing them to justice on behalf of their victims. That was the reason she rarely spent more than a few days a month at home.
A small, black hover-vehicle caught her attention as it slid sideways from the skyway, turned and sped toward her building. Etched across the front was a bright neon-green MSF logo. And, just in case anyone missed it the first time, the same logo appeared on the doors, roof, back, and under the chaise.
The car stopped, hovering outside Avei’s window. The glare of the headlights caused her to squint. Damn him.
She was miserable and furious in equal measures. Deputy Inspector Skora had no right to invade her privacy, even though she knew the reason for his visit. Of course, he wanted to see her after he’d received her resignation letter. What did I expect?
When the car zoomed off, Avei sat up. “Lights.”
The windows frosted over as the room brightened, bathing the space in a warm glow. She kicked herself for not doing that earlier. The light revealed her vivid tattoos of alien arachnids in various shapes, sizes and colors, covering her legs and arms and peeking out from the top of her wrinkled tank top. To Avei’s mind there was no such thing as too many spider tattoos.
Ragged burn scars covered the backs and palms of both hands and her left cheek. Avei had rejected the doctor’s offer to remove them. When he asked her why, she didn’t have an answer, and even now the reason for keeping the scars remained elusive. She tried to smooth down her short, purple hair, which stuck up in all directions. Every time she pressed it down, it bounced back.
Avei caught sight of her reflection in the darkened window and startled. She looked like one of those addicts hooked on Zenith, a new designer drug notorious for causing intense hallucinations that muddled the mind. Fantasy became reality, causing a staggering number of people across their corner of the galaxy to die, from suicide or accidental death.
Despite her current appearance, drugs had never appealed to Avei and she stayed away from them. Not so with alcohol. She cringed at the ever-present pile of empty units of alcohol on the coffee table. Might be time to cut back.
Avei scanned her messy home. She knew Skora would be there any moment, and she needed to do something about the mess before he arrived. She leaped up and a wave of dizziness hit. Her vision narrowed, followed by a brief bout of nausea. Did I eat today? When her vision cleared, the sight of the untouched food on the dining table answered her question. The doctors had warned that if she didn’t eat regularly, she’d find herself back in the hospital. A clear sign her priorities needed recalibration.
Avei scooped up the alcohol containers and brought them to a small door in the wall next to the kitchen, shoving them inside. The garbage slid down to the incinerator in the basement. The food containers on the counter went next, most still full of food. Wiping her hands on her pajama shorts reminded her she also needed to change. Her face flushed red at the thought of meeting her boss in her pjs.
She dashed into her bedroom, where the unmade bed sat amidst a sea of dirty clothes. On the nightstand was a framed picture of her as a little girl, laughing as she hugged a massive Andior spider. Magnus. Avei averted her eyes from the picture, which represented another painful loss, and stepped between two large piles of clothes to push a button on the wall. A door slid open to reveal a row of empty hangers. How long had it been since she did the laundry? A bolt of fear went through her. Since she had been home, she had done nothing except wallow in self-pity.
With another pledge to do better, Avei bent over the clothes piled nearest to her and dug through them. A sharp pain erupted in her right abdomen from the laser wound she had suffered in the showdown with Apollyona. Hands on her knees, she sucked in deep breaths until the throbbing subsided to a manageable level. Gods, I’m a mess. She straightened up, a wrinkled dress gripped in her hands. She used it to blot the beads of sweat dotting her forehead. A ding from the front door announced Skora’s arrival. Avei held out the crumpled dress and sighed. Out of time, she threw it over her head and pulled it down over her pajamas.
“It’s D.I. Skora.” His deep voice came through on the comm device next to the front door. “I received your resignation letter. Can we please talk?”
Avei smoothed her dress as she walked from the bedroom to the front door. Her insides roiled at the coming conversation. Notifying Skora of her retirement hadn’t been an impulsive act. She had spent her entire convalescence thinking about it and written her resignation letter weeks ago. But she knew that he wouldn’t let her go easily; she had one of the highest close rates on the force and he’d do almost anything to keep her on the job.
This was going to take some willpower. It wouldn’t be easy walking away from a job she loved, not to mention Sezin Watson. Avei had come to count on her eccentric AI associate and it no longer seemed anything but normal that her partner in solving crime was a holographic image emitted from a floating holoball.
Sezin relished the idea of being Avei’s sidekick, which was endearing but could be equally problematic. MSF technology didn’t allow AIs to manifest into solid form, which prevented an AI from taking any kind of physical action when they found themselves in dangerous situations. To compensate, Sezin’s over-the-top personality manifested itself in unconventional choices of attire and personas. Sezin would often try to trick an assailant by switching to their favorite avatar, a seven-foot-tall Vusian wrestler with multiple guns peppered to the exterior of their armor, and a massive rail gun named Esmeralda nestled in their giant hands. Subtle wasn’t a word that could be applied to Avei’s partner. Gods, I’m going to miss Sezin.
The inner critic she’d wrestled with over the last three months came roaring back, casting doubt on her decision to leave the Mernin Security Forces. It was a job she no longer had any business doing. A job that got twenty innocent people killed because she made a terrible mistake. That reminder put an end to the vacillation. Avei continued to the door and reached for the switch just as Skora spoke again.
“Avei, I need your help. We’ve got a new serial killer using spiders to kill their victims. I tell you, it’s the stuff of nightmares. Well, my nightmares, not yours. Nexus is calling the killer Zarul, after the species of spiders they used to murder their first two victims. I think they’re called the zarultikna. Or zarultissa. Something like that. Maybe you’ve seen the news reports?”
They’re called zarultalzin. Avei pulled her hand back and leaned into the door to listen.
“You have to admit the name Zarul is a marked improvement over some of the names Nexus has come up with in the past for your serial killers. They could have gone with arachnaslayer, spidassassin, or some other ridiculous name we’d be stuck with for the duration of the case. Anyway, the lunatic just killed again, using a different kind of spider and it’s massive. At least ten times as big as the zarul-whatever. I had no idea they came that big. I may never sleep again. Anyway, I digress. Given your obsession with the horrid little… well, not so little… bugs, I’d love your thoughts on the situation.”
Arachnids, not bugs. Avei couldn’t deny she was intrigued. The zarultalzin spiders were particularly aggressive and their venom caused an agonizing death. A sense of duty flared, along with the familiar moral obligation she experienced when a serial killer was on the loose. How many people will die after I quit?
“I know how close you were to Tral and Ezo,” Skora said, sensing he had her attention. “I don’t believe they’d want you to leave the force.”
Avei reared back from the door. The air was heavy with silence. A repudiation of sorts.
A heavy sigh came through the comm. “Okay Avei, I know what you’re going through, and I’ll give you a bit more time. I’ll swing by the spaceport in a few days when you are back from medical leave. We’ll talk then. In the meantime, I’m sending you what we have on Zarul. Please look at the files and let me know your thoughts. I need your expertise to work up a profile so we can catch this monster.”
Avei leaned against the door and listened to his footsteps recede down the hallway. She needed to talk to her parents. Given what they’d gone through over the last few months, she owed it to them. Almost losing their last living child had taken its toll. They never talked about it, but the fear never left their faces. They would be ecstatic to see her leave the force. So why the dread?
She touched the locket. The one subject she had avoided thinking about when penning her resignation letter crashed to the forefront and it tore her breath away. The day she became a citizen meant ending the search for Brasnik, the serial killer who had tortured and murdered Anastasia. Bringing him to justice had driven Avei to join the Mernin Security Forces a decade ago. What she hadn’t expected was how much she had fallen in love with the job. Now she was walking away. She slid down the wall, her eyes locked on the monitor as the picture of her and Anastasia reappeared.
“Lights off.” The room plunged into darkness.
The Starliner Murders, by Kari Charsper, is a new space mystery novel. Avei Themis, the protagonist, is an inspector for Mernin Security Forces, and along with her AI companion, she's made a career out of hunting the galaxy’s most dangerous serial killers. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous novelist has also made a career out of writing sensationalized, over-the-top versions of Avei's cases.
But after a horrific last mission, Avei's given in her notice. I mean, horrific by the standards of a professional serial-killer catcher. It's not gory, but there was a high body count, including 2 of Avei's dear friends. Avei has just a few days of desk duty left before her retirement paperwork comes through and she can start a new life, hopefully a serial-killer-free life, where she can recover and heal, and maybe focus on her family interest in arachnids.
Avei's retirement is delayed when a suspicious death occurs on the luxury starliner Delphi. With wealthy guests from across the galaxy expecting the best service on their travels, this investigation needs to happen carefully, without upsetting or inconveniencing any of the passengers or accusing the wrong person, and the investigation must find out the truth, quickly. There's a locked-door aspect of a murder on the luxe starliner that I really enjoyed, and this added stakes to the story which helped to keep the world of wealthy alien vacationers from feeling campy.
The Starliner Murders shines with a galaxy filled with aliens, hybrids, cults, and opulent space travel. I always like a pulpy, escapist world, full of weird creatures and space adventures. It's mostly a fun and fascinating galaxy, but there are moments where the pacing slows as the novel needs to explain the background. We readers don't know what it means when a character has left the Bhindoir commune or why a character with a quarter Thumal DNA is unusual, for example, and this can slow down the action while we discover more about the world.
Avei is a well-developed character, which helps keep the story dramatic and not too campy. Her complicated relationships with others -- including her parents, her supervisor, her crush, and her AI partner -- help this feel like a full person living in a real society.
The luxury spaceliner setting leads to wild motives and wild creatures, and Avei's personal story helps ground this story. The result is a fun locked-door murder mystery in space. Without revealing the ending (or too much of the investigation, since you'll want to discover it with Avei), I can say there's a satisfying reveal that works well for the established scifi world.