There was once a group of like-minded people called the L-5 Society, founded in 1975. Their sole purpose was to "place a colony at LaGrange Point #5, the one trailing the Moon at 60 degrees" or "to found the first colony in space." The board of directors included the sci-fi powerhouses of both Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle. The Society even had a monthly magazine, eloquently named L-5 News. In 1986, the Society merged with the National Space Institute. In the novel LaGrange Five, Mack Reynolds shows us in fiction how such a society would exist, which ends up operating more like fantasy than reality.
Rex Bader is a private investigator from earth who is called to Island Three at the LaGrange Point to solve the mystery of the missing professor and father of the entire LaGrange Point project. At the same time as the investigation, the cases of Wide Syndrome (a contagious kind of claustrophobia) are on the increase and there are talks of revolution. Who is behind all three scenarios and what can Rex do to save the day?
Yes, the premise does sound hokey and the novel will disappoint you as it is, indeed, hokey. I admire Reynolds' gusto about the subject of the L-5 community, but the storyline is flat, all laid out and very predictable. I would say it was written for the juvenile audience if it wasn't for the occasional swear words and the one sex scene. I also admire Reynolds' insistence that the pseudo-syndicalism style of government with its superior intelligent human beings will make an `idyllic utopia.' The socialist/communist stance of the novel is clearly made as is the persistent claim that modern society isn't working and drastic social change is needed to raise equality, fairness and Utopian ideals. His head is obviously in the clouds. This all comes from me- one registered with the Socialist Party! Too dreamy, too optimistic.
Besides the high idealism involved, the writing style is for the birds. I don't know why Reynolds insists on repeating the name Rex Bader at the beginning of every chapter and interspersed though the paragraphs. And why does the mild idiosyncratic expletive "Wizard" have to appear 30 times through the 227 page book? Its repetition is annoying, as is the reiteration of L-5 facts. It seemed like every fact had to be repeated twice even though very little of it led into the plot's predictable solution at all.