Has anyone read Crossings by Graham Hill? It looks like it might qualify, but I haven’t read it. The author is an astronomer from New Zealand.
Larry Niven’s short story “Neutron Star” is a classic astronomy puzzle.
“She glided into my observatory cloaked in a haze of cigarette smoke, her eyes dancing in vortices like pulsars winking in a planetary nebula. She was hot, sizzling, only measurable in Kelvins. She had curves, not plain Jane curves, but graceful parabolics, merging and blending with each other in a way that would make the most hard-hearted lens-grinder blush with envy. I knew right away that this dame spelled trouble, serious trouble, like getting called in for a grant review during a Republican administration…”
Who was that, GargoyleWB? It reminds me of Garrison Keillor.
Bumping this because I just read, and hugely enjoyed, a book that fits BA’s description.
Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer is set in the present (more or less). An alien spaceship arrives on Earth. The first person they meet is a folksy astronomy popularizer, sort of like a cross between Carl Sagan and Red Green. Stuff happens, and one of the aliens is arrested for the murder of a human.
The majority of the book takes the form of a courtroom mystery, and astronomy plays a big part in the resolution of the mystery. I really enjoyed this book; picked it up last night to read a few pages before bed, and couldn’t put it down. Read it cover to cover from 11pm to 2:30am.
It has some minor flaws: Some of the legal procedure is a bit iffy (Sawyer is Canadian, and he’s writing about California law), for example. Also, he refers too often to the O.J. Simpson trial to set up elements of his own story, so it’s already feeling somewhat dated, and will become more so over the years. It doesn’t matter, though; the plot moves like an avalanche and the ending is simultaneously clever, surprising, and satisfying.
I think it’s perfect for what you’re looking for, BA.
Though mystery purists will probably shudder in horror at my suggestion, the Doc Savage novel “No Light to Die By” (Bantam Omnibus #5/July 1947 pulp) has astronomers for characters and has a mystery that involves a gang that produce wierd phenomena in the sky.
The Doc Savage novel “Devil on the Moon” (Bantam #50/March 1938 pulp) has a gang that claims it can fly rockets to the moon.
You might enjoy these, The Bad Astronomer, but I’ll warn you: they’re light reading.