The Ark

When a conspiracy threatens the last shreds of humanity, salvation comes in the form of a sports star turned detective. Tomlinson's debut novel follows the exploits of Bryan Benson, the much-beloved detective of Avalon, one of two habitat modules on the Ark spaceship that's carrying humans away from a doomed Earth. As the Ark's bourgeois crew prepares to finally land on an alien planet, a geneticist is reported missing. When Benson tugs at the thread of the mystery, his entire reality unravels around him, and he delves into the underbelly of the Ark to find the truth among stolen paintings, partisan politics, and a cult leader who threatens to destroy everything Benson loves. Tomlinson's pacing is beyond reproach, as he deftly crafts an ever more elaborate web of intrigue within the self-contained setting. The book's few, small hiccups crop up mainly when Tomlinson attempts to work in a piece of 20th-century pop culture that's simply out of sync with his timeline, or when his word choice becomes repetitive. Tomlinson's female characters are refreshingly nuanced, and his use of Chekov's (sometimes literal) gun is sound enough to gloss over the rough patches in this impressive first novel. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency. (Nov.)