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…"
Murder by Memory is a delightful sci-fi mystery that takes place on the HMS Fairweather, a space ship that it's currently en route to a new planet. Of course, space travel takes a very, very long time, and it will be centuries before it finally lands. As a result, the Fairweather includes a Library in which guests can choose bodies to host their consciousnesses, or, if they would like a rest, they can simply let their consciousness rest in their own personal memory book within the library. When a person's body dies, they can either rest for a while, or they may choose a new body to upload all of the information found within this book, which includes all aspects of their personality. This concept of storing one's consciousness separate from a body is such a fascinating one, and I think also one that has been present in many sci-fi/futuristic discussions, so I was excited to dive in and explore Waite's execution of this concept.
Our story begins when Dorothy Gentleman is abruptly awoken from her own rest and put into a body that she does not recognize. Soon after she is awake, she learns that another passenger has been murdered, and that is appears some other "books" containing other people's minds are also being deleted from the Library itself. I thought it was a great idea to start this story off with readers being thrust into a new world at the same time Dorothy was waking up into an unfamiliar body when she certainly wasn't expecting to. There is a lot of world-building for us readers to learn, and we are thrown into learning about this from the start.
I really wanted to like this more than I did, but I struggled to find myself fully engaging with the story and I honestly struggled at times to maintain my focus. Although the characters are all interesting, there was something about our protagonist's narrative voice that really lacked much personality to really keep me hooked. What kept me reading was the fascinating premise and a general interest in finding out what was going on in the ship, as well as the hope that I would become more connected to the protagonist as the story continued. I also found Waite's writing easy to fall into and I think she does seem to have a knack for creating some really clever settings and writing choices throughout, which is something I found myself really enjoying.
I'm not sure this is the best book to really fully dive into this concept of memory and the library of minds and what because since it is a novella, it's a bit brief and lacks the ability to dig into these ideas more, and instead the focus is understandably more on the murder mystery/conspiracy aspect than it is on exploring the concept. I feel like this would have worked really well as a full length novel, but since this is the start of a series I'm actually very curious to see what future books will look like and whether they will all take place on this ship.
Overall, I thought this was a fun mystery with some really intriguing concepts explored throughout regarding consciousness and memory, but I didn't love it quite as much as I'd hoped to. I think it will be a big hit for many people, but I found it didn't captivate me as much as I expected, and I found it lacked some of the depth I was looking for.
If you're mystery or sci-fi fan who appreciates a quick, "cozy" murder mystery with some interesting personalities, then Murder by Memory should definitely be showing up on your TBR!
