Reviewed by Taylin
TITLE: Murder on Cabot’s Landing
SERIES: Standalone
AUTHOR: Max Griffin
PUBLISHER: DsP Publications
LENGTH: 275 Pages
RELEASE DATE: September 26, 2023
BLURB:
Elam Vandreren arrives on Cabot’s Landing expecting to become the planet’s Resident and caretaker. Instead he finds himself investigating a grisly crime and uncovering even more disturbing secrets.
When Elam finds the prior Resident murdered, he thinks the Resident’s spouse did it. Sigurd van Dorstadt, the investigator from the transport ship Zuiderkruis, thinks Elam did it. They both think no one else is on the planet.
It turns out they’re both wrong—about everything.
Although Elam and Sigurd don’t like each other, they join forces with a team from Zuiderkruis to find the truth. The evidence soon points to unknown criminals hiding out in the ruins of an ancient military base—and they’re not the planet’s only other inhabitants.
When part of their team is taken hostage, Elam and Sigurd barely escape with their lives. To survive and rescue their friends, they must rely on each other and make an alliance with a secretive group called the Left Behind. But the more of Cabot’s Landing’s secrets they uncover and the more their feelings for each other grow, the more fraught their decisions become. With duty and honor at odds with their hearts, can Elam and Sigurd strike a balance they can live with?
REVIEW:
Elam craved the solitude of his prospective new home, but that’s not what he got. A murder meant an investigation hosted by Sigurd and his crew. Sigurd was a man who always did his duty no matter the personal cost. Elam and Sigurd have secrets, and both are experts in their related fields. There are others with secrets, too. The question is who can figure out what first, and how it impacts their budding relationship.
I had such high hopes for this story, and it began well, confirming my initial thoughts. For the majority, this story takes on a distinct investigative tone, making for good reading. Then, when I thought I would experience the pinnacle of drama, everything became disappointing. Murder on Cabot’s Landing is a relatively long story, but I feel more could have been done with the time available. Alternatively, it may have been better as part of a series.
The story is told in the third person from the viewpoints of Elam and Sigurd. Technically, it is in good order, which is the standard from DsP. At the beginning, there is a timeline outlining many centuries of events. It is written clearly and concisely, which is lovely, but the sheer volume covered means that only a general idea of what’s happened will be remembered.
The events on the planet are one snippet of the bigger picture because there is another scheduled timeline of events at the end of the planetary story. While it was good to complete the overall picture, the two lists made the discoveries on the planet more important than the relationship between Elam and Sigurd, making it seem like a slow-burn business trip romance that ran out of time.
In conclusion, this is one of those stories where the blurb promised more than the story delivered. I expected a futuristic murder mystery with a heartwarming star-crossed fusion of souls added to the mix. I got a good murder mystery – but a threat of a romance that was more like an afterthought. So, if you are after a tremendous interplanetary romance, this isn’t it. There’s more happening in the universe than the feelings of two men.
RATING: 
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