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A review by chantaal
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
4.0
I'm in love with this sci-fi cozy-adjacent murder mystery sub-genre - and to get even more micro about the subgenre, I love sci-fi cozy-adjacent murder mysteries on space ships/space hotels/space cruises/space living. It hits all the right buttons for me, and Murder by Memory is an excellent example of what I love about it.
In this novella, we're introduced to Dorothy Gentleman, who wakes up in a body that is not her own. On this space habitat, humans can save their minds in a great library, and can be put in a new body. But usually they make that choice, and stumbling into the middle of a murder mystery is not normal. Mostly. Dorothy is a detective, after all.
I'd like to leave the summary at that, because this is so short. What I will say is that there's a great amount of world exploration done in such a short amount of time, and Olivia Waite does it well. Dorothy explores the mystery at hand, and we get to learn so much about this space habitat and how it works and the people who live in it, and there is a YARN SHOP and I loved that almost as much as Dorothy did. It's charming and warm despite the murder. People comping this to Miss Marple or similar are not wrong.
I enjoyed the entire experience of reading this, and I can't wait for more. Couple this with Malka Older's Mossa & Pleiti series and you'll see what I mean by this sub-genre. I really love it.
In this novella, we're introduced to Dorothy Gentleman, who wakes up in a body that is not her own. On this space habitat, humans can save their minds in a great library, and can be put in a new body. But usually they make that choice, and stumbling into the middle of a murder mystery is not normal. Mostly. Dorothy is a detective, after all.
I'd like to leave the summary at that, because this is so short. What I will say is that there's a great amount of world exploration done in such a short amount of time, and Olivia Waite does it well. Dorothy explores the mystery at hand, and we get to learn so much about this space habitat and how it works and the people who live in it, and there is a YARN SHOP and I loved that almost as much as Dorothy did. It's charming and warm despite the murder. People comping this to Miss Marple or similar are not wrong.
I enjoyed the entire experience of reading this, and I can't wait for more. Couple this with Malka Older's Mossa & Pleiti series and you'll see what I mean by this sub-genre. I really love it.