Detective Elijah Bailey is charged with solving the murder of a Spacer scientist. The case pits the interests of Earth and its 8 Billion people against those of the 50 Spacer worlds and their virtually unlimited resources. Bailey is in the middle and his new partner on the case is an advanced Spacer robot. He needs to solve the case fast to ease the tensions--and before his robot partner beats him to it to save his job.
Asimov was told once that a science fiction mystery would be impossible to write. The argument was because the hero could always solve the case with some kind of a whizbang frammitz it would make the story unreadable. This is Asimov's answer to the challenge.
This is a re-read but it's been close to 30 years since the last time. I remembered the generalities but not the specifics so it was still an entertaining read. Though I have to say that compared to modern novels that run 300-450 pages, the older (1960-1975) SF novels I have seem minimalist.
