The Starship Trap by Mel Gilden

The Starship Trap by Mel Gilden
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Enterprise is pulled away from Starbase 23 to rendezvous with a diplomatic party and then proceed to Starbase 12 where further orders would be forthcoming. On route they encounter a Klingon warship and her Captain accuses the Federation of complicity in the disappearance of a number of ships in this region of space. Kirk is totally confused over the accusation but the lead diplomat (Conrad Franklin Kent) intervenes and the Klingon ship departs. Kirk learns that starships from many worlds have indeed vanished and he along with some specialists have been assigned to discover the cause and to prevent it from happening again. Mr Kent and his party however represent an anti-starfleet faction within the federation and Professor Omen a leading weapons designer (responsible for the weapons package onboard Enterprise) make strange bedfellows for this mission.
As you would expect things do not go according to plan and the Enterprise does discover the cause of the ship disappearances and then becomes a victim and finds itself in another universe/reality. They are however able to make use of the device that caused their relocation and begin the journey back encountering in one universe a species very much like the Klingons before finally returning to their own realm and facing down those responsible.
The Starship Trap is as my rating reflects an okay Star Trek story, the politics if given more weight could have made a complex core element of a novel but it's almost window dressing especially given the resolution for some of the characters. There was a lot more in the novel that never got fleshed out and that was a shame, some of the ideas would make great contemporary scifi but for me they didn't work and lacked that certain something that makes a novel stand out in as crowded franchise like Trek.

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