Murder by Memory

Space ship detective Dorothy Gentleman wakes up from a 2-year-long rest in an unfamiliar body. Instead of having her consciousness downloaded from her book in the library into a new clone of her usual body, like she does every lifetime, for some reason she’s in a stranger’s. She was restored from an emergency backup when part of the library was severely damaged. How could that have happened, and is it related to the mysterious death that occurred at the same time? Dorothy would ask the ship, but it’s currently drunk (on an electrical storm).

This tiny novella has vibes for days. It’s a cozy murder mystery in a utopian society where death isn’t permanent and money doesn’t matter, on a space ship with a personality! There’s a show more yarn store involved! Everyone is queer! Cocktails are made out of memories! The main character is a Cool Aunt! I can’t wait for the next one. show less

IN A NUTSHELL
'Murder By Memory ' was a clever, entertaining, well-written novella that created a whole new world aboard the Fairweather, an interstellar generation ship and solved a crime unique to that environment while introducing a ship's detective I hope to see more of soon.

'Murder By Memory' is only 100 pages long, but Olivia Waite packed a lot into it and never made me feel I was having data thrust upon me. She opened with the ship's detective, Dorothy Gentleman, waking in a stalled lift during a magnetic storm, in a body that is not her own. After that, things get stranger and more complicated.

I liked the calm way that Dorothy assessed her situation and eventually discovered and solved the crime that created it. I was comfortable show more inside her head. As I'd expect from a ship's detective, she was observant, suspicious, and relentless in her desire to know what really happened and who was responsible. She was also as kind as her role allowed. She showed empathy for others and was haunted by a recent loss of her own. I liked that she was as curious about people as she is about solving puzzles.

The worldbuilding was deftly done. I quickly got a feel for the setup of this generation ship on which people will live for a millennium, using a succession of bodies updated from a single 'book' that stores their memories and personalities. The characters were exotic but engaging. Fairweather is full of all kinds of interesting people, although CIS white males seem to be very much a minority. The crime was ingenious. I even liked the AI running the ship, especially as the magnetic storm had made it cheerfully tipsy when we first met.

Both Dorothy Gentlemen and the Fairweather offer a wealth of opportunities for future stories. I'm looking forward to reading them. show less

Set in an interstellar ship when instead of generations growing up and dying this has a situation where you live, regularly update your memory book, that's stored in a Library (and the cover is so cool) and when you die you can re-inhabit a new body and continue on. Some people change their lives, others occasionally take a break and rest for a few years and when that time is over they are revived.
Dorothy Gentleman is in a rest period when she wakes ahead of her time, in a different body and a shipmind that is not well. The impossible has happened, a murder and deleted minds. Dorothy has to investigate and try to see what the motive is and how the impossible has become possible.
I read it in a gulp and really enjoyed it. Dorothy is show more delightful and there are a lot of callbacks to Miss Marple (not least in knitting!) and it feels like a science fiction homage to golden age detective novels. I would recommend. show less

Well this was an astonishing surprise -- short, immersive, full of really intriguing worldbuilding, and with a ship's detective that I'd like to know better. Love the library of memories, love the memory cocktails and the exuberant beauty of a ship full of people exploring lives until they reach a far flung destination. The descriptions of the ship are seductive. The characters are that perfect blend of sweet and irritating, with threads of heartbreak to give them depth. The mystery is compelling and sordid and entirely secondary to the satisfaction of the world building.

Advanced Reader's Copy provided by Edelweiss.

Held up well to a second reading. Really interested in this world.

This was a fun novella. I liked Waite's take on immortality via re-embodiment (transferring memories to a new body), especially the consideration of aging and the nature of memory itself. When everyone's basic needs are met, what drives society? what kind of crime is there? Why would anyone be murdered if they can just be brought back?

It's a novella so it can't explore these ideas too much, but there's a potential series here, and at least this first look is a fun mystery, too.

This was a fun cozy mystery in space, a combination of genres I didn't know I needed until I read this. The author managed to pack in whole lot of world building, back story and mystery into just 100 pages and almost none of it felt short changed or rushed. I say almost because the resolution of the mystery did feel a bit rushed and a bit dense with finance concepts I didn't really follow but the mystery is rarely the main focus of a cozy mystery so it didn't bother me too much.

The science bordered on magic, and no real time was spent on why this space voyage was happening and in this book it worked quite well, I found I didn't need to know how things worked, or why it was just to just experience this world as is.

I am looking forward show more to more of these stories! show less

Murder by Memory is the first book in a science-fiction cozy mystery series, and I thought the premise was rather intriguing. I love science-fiction and there are not a lot of books that focus on murder mysteries in this genre, so this one sounded like something that would be right up my alley. While I was interested in the thought of going to a new planet and was fascinated by the ideas presented in this book, I was not really impressed with the overall story.

Personally, the concept of waking up on a ship and having no idea where one is or what is happening is what drew me to this book. However, this was not the case with this story as the protagonist knew exactly what was going on, knew exactly who she was, knew exactly the problem, show more and the info-dump continued on. I would have liked to have learned this information as the story progressed as it would have been more interesting. What it did was lower the overall mystery and suspense for me. And to be honest, this info-dump did not do character development any favours either. Because the MC knew exactly what was going on, I wasn't able to be in her head very much, nor was I confused as to what was happening because the MC knew what was happening the entire time. It would have been more mysterious if the MC didn't understand what was happening and had to investigate. Unfortunately, the MC felt quite one-dimensional; I would have liked more development, more quirks, more something to make her more appealing.

The mystery itself was sort of secondary to what was happening to the MC so I didn't find it that compelling. To be honest, it was kind of predictable. There were a lot of very fascinating ideas and thoughts presented in this book, but the length of the book didn't allow for the exploration of those ideas. I know it's the first book of a series, but there also has to be some meat in the original story as well. You can't just present ideas and not develop them at all.

Verdict
Murder by Memory presented some really cool ideas about the concepts of life and death, but didn't really have an opportunity to develop those ideas due to the length of the book. While I know there will be other books in this series, I do feel like there has to be some substance in the first book as well, but to be honest, there was a lot of information dumping rather than allowing the MC to lead the reader into discovering it with the MC, not my favourite form of storytelling. And while I did find the mystery predictable and easy to solve, there was enough in this book to make me curious about the second book when it is released. show less