Reviewed by Charles Remington for Readers' Favorite

Curtis McCoy is a newly qualified PI who has received his first assignment, which is to investigate a supposedly accidental death - a crucial assignment for this fledgling PI which, if successfully completed, will provide him with his full Private Investigator’s licence. Curtis is part Ryxin, an alien race which arrived on Earth in 1905, quickly adopting human form, intermingling, marrying and breeding with the human population. Murder on Muritai by Genesis Cotterell describes how, almost a century later, when the subterfuge was discovered, the human government put severe restrictions on the Ryxin’s freedom to reproduce, and as a result of the Ryxin’s sometimes lawless behaviour, decreed that human police forces would not intervene in Ryxin affairs. This created the need for private investigators to fill the gap, to provide answers for the victims of crime, and a route to justice for the Ryxin community.

Recently estranged from his human wife, McCoy starts to delve into the circumstances surrounding the death in question, but is quickly caught up in several parallel strands of investigation, among them a secret Ryxin breeding program which, in order to obtain information, he reluctantly joins. Required to impregnate a Ryxin female known only as a number, he struggles with his feelings and principles, finally falling in love with the woman he knows only as number 17. Weaving his way through the dangerous underbelly of Ryxin society, it starts to become clear that the death he has been appointed to investigate was indeed no accident; he is investigating a murder and is in great danger.

I found the Ryxin aliens described in Murder on Muritai were difficult to distinguish from their human counterparts, though this could be a deliberate ploy by the author, Genesis Cotterell. I am wondering whether there are parallels to be drawn with, or if the author was influenced by, the treatment and behaviour of the indigenous Antipodean population. I may be mistaken, though someone better versed in the history of the Aboriginals and Maoris would probably be a much better judge. Murder on Muritai is a complex book containing a great deal of genealogical information regarding the alien settlers and the first in a proposed trilogy. It will be interesting to see how this series develops.