With Polaris, Jack McDevitt returns to the universe inhabited by Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath, last seen in A Talent For War.

Benedict is a seller of antiquarian artifacts mostly having to do with space travel and he's got a current crop from the spaceship Polaris.

Decades earlier, the Polaris ran into trouble, sent out an SOS but when help arrived, was found adrift and empty. The Polaris had been chartered to take a mixed group of individuals to witness the death of a far-off solar system.

Benedict's interest is piqued when someone apparently wants these artifacts destroyed, along with anyone who gets in the way. The mystery is multi-layered, wrapped around the original circumstances surrounding the Polaris and brought forward to present day with the artifacts serving as link to everything. While Benedict investigates, Kolpath intercedes to save his skin a few times as the two of them begin to attract unwanted attention.