Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite

A Memory Called Empire meets Miss Marple in this cozy, spaceborne mystery, helmed by a no-nonsense formidable auntie of a detective.

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.

Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.

Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

A cozy mystery in space

Ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers. Another woman is dead, and someone has destroyed the “book” in which Dorothy’s own mind had been stored for the last several years. On a generation ship where everyone is used to dying and waking up again in a “blank” (essentially a body cloned from their own), it’s disconcerting to find herself inhabiting an unfamiliar body, but Dorothy gamely sets about investigating the other woman’s death, the destruction of her own book, and just why Gloria, the woman whose body she now inhabits, was out and about during a magnetic-storm lockdown.

Dorothy is an engaging first-person narrator. Regardless of her physical age, she comes across as a capable, observant, and intelligent middle-aged woman. She’s practical and level-headed, with a wry sense of humor and a tendency to avoid sentiment—especially when it comes to her brilliant but sometimes feckless nephew, Rutherford (or “Ruthie”), of whom she is secretly very fond. She solves the mystery quite handily, aided by Ruthie, his equally brilliant lover John, and Ferry, the AI entity who runs the ship.

The overall premise is fascinating. I’m interested to see how the worldbuilding develops and interacts with the mystery plots over future books. A victim who can live again gives a different twist to both murder and investigation! I do hope that the next installment will be longer, though. This one felt almost too short; I wanted to spend more time with Dorothy, Ferry, Ruthie, and John. I’d also like to see Dorothy contend with a more complex plot—one with more red herrings, false clues, and obstacles to solving it. There’s scope for some deeper character exploration as well. But I found the book delightful despite its brevity, and I’m really looking forward to the next one.

Challenges: COYER 2025: Out to Lunch; NetGalley & Edelweiss Challenge 2025

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• COYER 2025: Out to Lunch
• Netgalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2025

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