Andorra Pett and the Oort Cloud Café
by Richard DeePublished on June 15th 2017
Pages: 234
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Meet Andorra Pett; with her trusty sidekick, she's taken over a derelict cafe. On a mining station. It just happens to be orbiting Saturn! She's hoping for a fresh start, away from all the drama of her old life. It's a chance to relax and start again in a place where nobody knows anything about her or her past. But the cafe holds a secret, and secrets have a habit of coming out; whether you want them to or not. And being accident prone doesn't help. The more you try to pretend that you know what's going on, the worse it gets. Andorra's plans for peace and quiet get lost amid the revelations and skulduggery and she soon realises that the fate of the whole station lies in her hapless hands. In space, you can still trip over your feet; the question is, will you land upright?
I’m not usually a cozy mystery fan because it always drives me crazy when people don’t report crimes to the police and decide to investigate themselves. I decided to give this one a try though because of the twist on the genre. This cafe owner who is investigating a crime is living on a space station.
Andorra and her friend Cyril moved to a space station near Saturn. It is there to support mining in the rings of Saturn. The previous owner of the cafe left suddenly. When cleaning the cafe to reopen though, they find his body. Not knowing who to trust on the station because they are new, they keep him in the freezer.
The book gets into issues of sexual harassment and infidelity because the previous owner was known for seducing many women on the station and then keeping records that could be used to blackmail them. Anyone could be a suspect. I was reading this book just as all the accusations of sexual harassment in Hollywood were coming to light. It was a jarring juxtaposition to see this plotline at that time. It made it feel very timely and topical.
I liked the world building. Andorra is taken all over the station to see how life on the space station works. It was well thought out and logical. I love that there is a farm.
The book takes place an unspecified time in the future when Mars has been colonized for a long time. Unfortunately, there still is homophobia on the space station. That surprised me because usually I don’t see that in sci-fi I read. It made me uncomfortable because I kept thinking that we should be over that by then.
 Overall I did enjoy this story. I would be interested in reading more in this series. Check this one out especially if you enjoy both cozy mysteries and sci-fi.
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