The Last Campaign

The Near-Earth Mysteries, Book 2

By: Martin L. Shoemaker

Narrated by: Rebecca Mozo

A colony on Mars becomes home to a killer conspiracy in a Near-Earth Mystery by the award-winning author of The Last Dance.

Brazilian investigator Rosalia Morais, and her husband, revered American spacer Nicolau Aames, are building a life together in Mars’s Maxwell City, the fastest-growing settlement on the planet. Good news: there are no natural predators. Bad news: there are humans. That means the crime rate is growing, too.

To ensure public safety, Rosie’s appointed by the mayor as the Red Planet’s first chief of police. No sooner does she build a law enforcement squad than the biggest challenge looks to be internal. Policing the police for graft and corruption is one thing. But when an industrialist is found among the chars of an arson, it’s murder.

The fire leads to questions that can be answered by only one man - Nick’s former officer on the Earth-to-Mars vessel the Aldrin. And Nick is still duty bound to keep the officer’s secrets. As loyalties shift, trust breaks, and the tide of a political conspiracy rises, Rosie must solve a mystery that could doom the future of humanity on Mars.

©2020 by Martin L. Shoemaker. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

“Rebecca Mozo impressively introduces life in Maxwell City, on Mars, along with the array of international citizens who make up the settlement.… Mozo excels with the many accents and riveting descriptions, and listeners will feel like they are by Rosalia's side as she personally takes on daily challenges. Discussions with her and her police squad are fascinating and intimate. Audio is the optimal choice for this matchless story, which relies heavily on dialogue.” —AudioFile Magazine

“The wonders and dangers of living in space are grounded in the grit of Martian sand and the procedural mysteries that could just as easily have taken place on Earth as in space. This is smart, subtle speculative fiction.” —Publishers Weekly

OCCUPY MARS!

I love this sequel and hope it becomes a trilogy! I preferred the full cast style recording of The Last Dance. However, Rosalia was an enjoyable character and it was well performed.

Interesting but different than the first book

The story was compelling and kept me interested but a few things bugged me. The main character does not use contractions at all and it gets really annoying after a while to listen to do not, can not, it is over and over especially when the other characters do use contractions. The story is somewhat predictable (I figured out the 'bad' guy about 1/3 of the way through) and the ending felt rushed. I would like to know more about what happens next. I liked the narrator of the first book better and I wish this narrator had listened to the first book as some of the accents and pronunciations changed.

interesting but drawn out a bit much

I really enjoyed The Last Dance and Nick Aimes, so when I saw that sequel of sorts was released, I jumped on the opportunity to emerse myself back into this universe. Sadly thou, this book was not as interesting The Last Dance. Sure Aimes was in it, but this was structures more around his wife Morais, and her work as Police chief of Maxwell City, a settlement of roughly 50,000 people on Mars. Everything was their to make this an interesting story, yet I found it rather slow at times and overly drawn out at other. There's a murder, that leads to an investigation, that leads to a discovery, that leads to another murder, that leads to yet another bigger discovery, and so on. There was simply too many threads to follow and wrap up nicely, so on occasion a Deux Ex solution was thrown into the mix to wrap some of the loose threads up. Shoemaker also overly focused on the police procedure part while not offering something else to break up the monotony. In the Last Dance, he bounce between the present and past instances in Aimes life, offering a contrasting situation to explain away Nick's OCD. This book stayed in one timeframe the whole time and a result, the story became stagnant. I believe this is what resulted in additional "and thens".

Overall, I think it was an OK book and entertaining enough to keep reading until the end. Entertaining, but gripping enough to keep me hooked well past the point when I should have gone to sleep. I'm still interested to see where Shoemaker takes Aimes and Morais.

Gripping sequel to The Last Dance

Rosalia and Nicolau return in Martin L Shoemaker's follow up to The Last Dance. After their departure from the Aldrin, the star-crossed couple is trying to build a new life on Mars, but responsibilities, Nick's personality, local and interplanetary government, and murder all interfere.
Shoemaker does a great job of keeping the listener guessing and wanting to know what's coming next.
You'll end up sitting in your parked car waiting to find out what happens.
I look forward to more Near-Earth Mysteries in the future.

Excellent 2nd book in series

I really enjoyed the characters from the 1st book that were followed up on in this book. The narration is good.

Good story ruined by poor editing and. narration

Good sci-fi mystery; narrator could have been reading the phone book. An admiral would know how to pronounce " bow" and not make stupid. grammar mistakes

A realistic mystery on a realistic Mars

Martin Shoemaker is a master at the hard science fiction mystery tale and this sequel to The Last Dance is no exception. I enjoyed seeing the red planet and Nick Aames through Rosalia's eyes, because she is one of Shoemakers most interesting characters. The tension builds slowly as clues, relationship cracks and conspiracies are all revealed through science and good old fashioned police work. He pulls everything together in the end for a satisfy read and a vision of a future Mars that isn't a utopia but most definitely a place I would like to live.

disappointing

This story did not live up to the potential I saw from the Last Dance. two of the main characters returned from that book, but their roles were so different and not in a good way. the main character of Last Dance was relegated to a very minor role which did not demonstrate his character in the first novel. The second character was the main protagonist but was much weaker than in the first novel. it was hard to reconcile them to even be the same people. perhaps if a reader did not read TheLast Dance, the story line and characters were fine. however as a reader of the first book, this story and characters were mere shadows of what could have been.

Not nearly as interesting as the first book

This one has less of the OCD specialty of the first book. Maybe it was the change of the main character or possibly the author’s lack of understanding of how to build an organization from ground up. Not like the first book at all.