An epidemic of exploding heads, and a rabble-rousing demagogue trying to foment Space Brexit, are the two flies in the ointment of the Glitter Band, a swarm of space habitats whose citizens vote on everything, mostly without giving it a conscious thought, via brain implants. Charged with extracting said flies (could they by any chance be linked?) is Panoply, the light-touch police force whose day job is keeping the constant elections free and fair. Can grizzled noirish Detective (sorry, "Prefect") Dreyfus, aided by puckish rising-star deputy Thalia Ng and cynical hyperpig Sparver Bancal, unravel the mystery before the Utopian federation of the Glitter Band is wrecked by self-interested secessionists? And if they do, will any of its inhabitants still have an intact upper deck? Read this book to find out!

But only if your tolerance for comic book villains who explain their motives before offering someone a sadistic choice, disjointed pacing, and plots gummed up with procedural manoeuverings and too-long flashback sequences is greater than mine. It doesn't help that I'm way more into the kind of galaxy-spanning space opera Reynolds gives us in the trilogy than cop stories, but I still don't think this is a very good example of the latter. Noggins going nova will always be an exciting premise (although slightly less so when "beta-level" copies of their owners can be resurrected for evidential purposes) but none of the characters here are very interesting, least of all Space Brexit dude and the perma-harried top cop "Lady" Jane Aumonier whose main purpose is to trust the hunches of Dreyfus. And even then, we learn early on that the upper-limit for cranial detonations is like 2,000. Hardly the end of the world in a populace of tens of millions!