Highlights
~summer storm > brandy
~KNITTING
~an inventors’ club
~being shelved together is The Most Romantic
~a drunk AI

I don’t often use this word, but: Murder by Memory is such a fun little romp!

It also very deftly and economically sketches out a setting I really want more of: the Fairweather is a spaceship that is functionally a city, carrying 10,000+ people from Earth to some new planet they won’t reach for centuries. Unlike a generation ship, though, the Fairweather intends to land with its original passengers, not their descendants, and it’s done this by granting them a kind of immortality: when they die, a digital copy of their consciousness is placed in a new copy of their body, and ta da, they’re walking around again!

(I immediately wanted to know if anyone was having children in this set-up, if that was allowed, but no word on that in this instalment.)

Even though the Fairweather seems to function as a kind of utopia, there are still accidents and crimes, which means there are still detectives – although I was fascinated to discover that they don’t have the power to arrest anyone; they’re literally just supposed to investigate. Our MC Dorothy is one of these detectives, and is called out of digital storage after some very suspicious things go down.

Murder by Memory has a quite lovely Gilded Age vibe to it, despite the far-future setting, and it’s plenty cosy. We have a ship AI who can get drunk; a library of crystal books where the passengers’ consciousnesses are stored; and cocktails that are made of memories instead of alcohol. There are little hints of worldbuilding that made me hungry to know more, like romances that last centuries, a reference to ‘turns’ that implies not every passenger is embodied at the same time (why not?), and the plan to give up immortality when they eventually reach their new planet. (That seems a naive expectation, but okay.) And of course, this is a form of immortality that I really hate, because it’s not immortality – the original consciousness doesn’t live forever, it just keeps getting copied, and I wonder if the passengers will realise that and have to face it when they reach the planet and are supposed to stay in just the one body until it dies?

Dorothy isn’t a hyper-genius like Sherlock Holmes, but she’s smart and methodical and deeply nosy (in a way that might be annoying to live with, but definitely makes her a great character). It certainly doesn’t take her very long to tease out what happened and why. The picture that’s revealed bit by bit is deeply horrifying but sadly believable – yeah, I can buy that terrible people might do that – but the tone is light enough that I doubt most readers will have trouble sleeping afterwards or anything.

It’s a lovely little read, an easy four-stars.

But…

Maybe it’s just that I don’t read enough novellas, but I was left feeling…really unsatisfied, like, that’s it??? Comparing it to the other novellas I’ve read recently – Adrift in Currents Clear and Clean and Orb of Cairado – Murder by Memory feels lacking. Not in quality – it deserves all of its four stars, and I’d give it four point five if the plugin I use to mark ratings let me! But Adrift and Orb both felt chunkier, chewier – they packed a lot more story into their pages.

This might be helped by the fact that both are significantly longer – Adrift is 140 pages on my ereader; Orb, 149 pages. Murder by Memory, on the other hand, is only 80 pages on my ereader.

Look: on the dreaded Big River site, Murder by Memory is $12. Adrift, which is published by Tordotcom just like Murder, is $13. I don’t begrudge it that price, for the record. But paying only one dollar less for Murder, which is about half the length???

Tor, I love you, and I have defended your novella prices for years…but no freaking way.

Murder by Memory is lovely. If you want to read it, I recommend you borrow it from the library. Paying $12 for it – or $20.45, for the hardcover! – makes no sense.

What an interesting genre blend this was!

Is it a mystery? Yes. Is it sci fi? Also yes. Is it fantasy, too? I would argue yes, as we are able to serve memories as cocktails and the process of saving people into books is very much closer to magic than science. Is it a romance? Almost yes, but definitely a relationship book with romantic overtones. Is it literary fiction? Also yes. This is perhaps the most interesting aspect to the writing.

I adore the romantic symbolism of going to the librarian to be “shelved together” and the idea that librarians in this world are a revered and well paid profession. There is so much beauty in the language of this book; at times it was almost a poem.

I would recommend this book to people who love Becky Chambers, folks who enjoyed the Thousand Doors of January, readers of Sarah Gailey, and folks who want a great book club pick with tons of content to discuss in a compact-size book.

There are so many things in Murder by Memory, a novella by Olivia Waite that give me a hook to connect readers. I will definitely be recommending this to folks who like science fiction and/or clever detectives. 1st in Dorothy Gentleman series. Women of a certain age have become popular lately after about a 20 year hiatus. Dorothy, even though she is in a young body, (not hers, by the way) has the savvy and sensibility of a woman past 50 like the great sleuths Miss Marple and Mrs. Pollifax. The science fiction is intriguing. What if people could be recorded into a "book" so when their body wears out they can be uploaded into a new one, kind of like Mickey from Mickey7. It is also short, a quick science fiction read that I can hand to folks who love The Murderbot Diaries. Readalike - Spare Man by Kowal.

This is the best quick read you could find if you’re looking for a fast mystery in a cozy sci-fi setting. I love a great sci-fi concept and this story has it all: an interstellar ship, new bodies for passengers to start new lifetimes, a library that contains your memories and experiences to upload into new bodies, and a mystery that begins when the ship's detective wakes up in someone else’s body.

For a very short read, the pacing is incredible. This looks like it will be a series so I cannot wait to see more of the characters and hope that we get to know them a little better each book as that is the downside to a book of this length.

Four and a half stars

Dorothy Gentleman is a detective on the HMS Fairweather, traveling through the stars to a far-distant planet to establish a colony. It will take 1,000 years to get there. Every passenger has their memories stored in the library and when their current body expires, they can upload their memories from the library and begin a new life. Dorothy as been "away" for two years. Her former wife died and did not choose to be resurrected and Dorothy misses her. But, one day she if abruptly resurrected into someone else's body; someone who was murdered. Murder is very rare on "Fairy" as Dorothy calls her. When questioned, Fairy tells Dorothy she was experiencing a magnetic storm and has no data stored about the incident. Then she discover that minds have been erased from the library. Who is committing murder on the starship and how can Dorothy track that person down? An enjoyable mashup of Agatha Christie meets the future. I found it similar to Mary Robinette Kowal's writing style.

I think this falls into the same trappings of most novellas in that it was too short for me to form any kind of emotional connection to the characters. That being said the world was super interesting and I did like Dorothy and despite it being a murder mystery, it had a cosy feel about it that I loved.

Overall, a nice easy read that can be devoured in an hour or so.

This was so fun and I was pleased to see that this will be part of a series: the setting was intriguing and I want to know more!

The story felt fast-paced and could easily be read in one sitting.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a galleybof Murder by Memory ahead of publication, in exchange for an honest review.

This was a relatively short novella/novelette and consequently my review is brief.

Dorothy Gentleman, ship's detective, wakes up in someone's else's body after a long hiatus. She investigates how she got there and how the body she's inhabiting lost its resident.

I enjoyed this cozy murder mystery. Dorothy's cleverness and her offbeat, ingenious nephew and his doting memory-crafting bartender partner. There's some excellent worldbuilding here. This novella was a nice way to fill the time. However, the case was pretty thin. I didn't have any strong feelings about the references to romance or the crimes involved, so I can't give this more than three stars. I look forward to the next case Dorothy's pursues that will allow the author to fill out this futuristic world even more. The writing is accessible and the characters are fun. If/when There's an omnibus of Dorothy Gentleman's casework, I look forward to giving it a look-see.

A quick, cozy story in a fun scifi-lite setting

I'll start by saying that I had the same problem with this novella that I do with pretty much every novella, it felt too short. I didn't feel connected to the characters and therefore I didn't particularly care about the mystery. I would've liked the book more if we had spent more time developing each element.
The main character was charming enough but I didn't really get a sense of who she is. The side characters were just there to service the story so I don't really have any thoughts about them.
The mystery was perfectly fine. I liked how it was related to the way death and resurrection operate in the series which added to the immersion into the scifi world.
What I liked most about the book was the little sci-fi elements, like the Library and the was memories are stored and reuploaded. I especially liked the memory cocktails, which I thought was a really cool and inventive idea.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC

This intriguing speculative science fiction mystery novelette brings us to far future, on board a interstellar space ship that has been headed for several centuries to a new planet for humanity. For the people on board, one’s memories can be easily uploaded and updated to a memory book stored in the ship’s library. Replicas of one’s body can be manufactured and one’s consciousness moved to the new body when the old one fails.

Dorothy Gentleman, one of the older humans serving as a ship detective in lieu of any police presence on the ship, suddenly and startingly awakens into a body not her own. The ship’s AI has thrown her into the nearby young body of banker Gloria Vowell when Dorothy’s memory book gets destroyed in the library. Fortunately, Dorothy’s genius nephew, Ruthie Talmadge, who has coded the ship, created a second memory back up of his aunt. He also reveals that he and a science colleague recently stumbled on a way to erase a memory book, something thought impossible. Dorothy goes on the hunt for the perpetrator, as it’s clear that deliberate vandalism has been involved in the destruction of her book and a couple others adjacent to hers on the library shelves. Her investigation into the memory murder expands as she realizes an even bigger crime may have involved.

What’s amazing in such a short book are the fantastic details of the world-building, imaginative evolutions of future technology, a plot that reads like a cozy mystery with innumerable engaging plot twists, and an unexpectedly clever investigative heroine in nosy aunt Dorothy.

The only thing stopping me from giving this review five stars is just how short the novella is – more and longer in Dorothy’s next outing please!!

Thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

(4.25/5 stars)

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite is a cozy sci-fi novella and the start of a new mystery series following a queer auntie detective.

I really enjoyed this little novella! But it felt a little too short; I really wanted more.

The setting is really interesting: we are aboard the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner, about a third of the way into a thousand-year journey to a new planet. Room and board is all inclusive, along with new bodies to shunt your memory into once your old one starts breaking down. The journey is quite long, so you can also "shelf" yourself--keeping your mind preserved in glass in the library--if you'd like to take a nap for a while.

Our point of view character is one of the ship's detectives. Dorothy Gentleman is a queer lady who is fond of knitting. She is aboard the passenger liner with her slightly chaotic nephew, Ruthie, one of the ship's programmers. One day, she wakes up in a body that isn't hers at the same time that another passenger is found murdered.

I will absolutely be continuing on with this series! I'd recommend this to folks who liked Malka Older's cozy sci-fi mystery series.

When Dorothy Gentleman, ship's detective, wakes up in a body that isn't hers, she's more than a little annoyed. After all, she's supposed to be retired, her mind resting in the ship's Library until she decides to print a body again. And even if she'd chosen to wake up, she should be in a fresh body all her own. But there's been a murder on the ship, and what's worse, someone is deleting the memory archives from the Library itself - something that should be impossible.

MURDER BY MEMORY is a fluffy fun little appetizer that left me longing for a deeper dive into this world. The mystery itself is pretty straight forward. Dorothy goes from point A to B to C in fairly quick succession, following the clues on a mostly linear path. It's not going to scatter red herrings on your trail or give you a cast of suspects to consider. In fact, the mystery is less about the Who than it is about the Why and the How.

Instead, I was much more intrigued with puzzling out the ship the murder takes place on. The H.M.S. Fairweather is on a thousand year journey to a new planet. But with the technology to back up a person's mind, it's not a traditional generation ship; there isn't a constant turnover of populace because a person can simply print themselves into a fresh body when their old body gives out. This opens up a whole host of fascinating societal questions that MURDER BY MEMORY only barely begins to touch on, but it was enough of a glimpse that I wanted to know more.

I was also impressed by the way the author quickly sketched out her core cast of characters, from Dorothy herself to Ralphie her well-meaning but not always sensible nephew to his mysterious bartender boyfriend. They don't have deep backstories given the length of the novella, but I got enough of a sense of them that I wanted to spend more time with them, as much as I wanted to explore the ship.

MURDER BY MEMORY is like an episode of a weekly crime procedural. You'll know most of the beats, but you'll enjoy it anyway for the comfort of the familiar, and you'll want to return the cozy cast of characters. As this is the start of a new sci-fi mystery series, I'm definitely looking forward to more adventures in this world, but I do find myself wishing this were a main course instead of a snack.

Murder by memory packs such as large punch in a pint sized package (novella). Between an incredibly cool world and a lovable host of characters this is what a cozy mystery dreams are made of.

Olivia Waite’s Murder By Memory compared itself to Dorothy L. Sayers and Ann Leckie, which was a huge ask — and I don’t think it worked. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t get Sayers from it (more Agatha Christie) and there wasn’t enough focus on the culture or enough gender fuckery to feel like a Leckie title. The comparison to A Memory Called Empire didn’t ring particularly true for me, either, but Miss Marple is an apt comparison.

It was a fun mystery, nonetheless, shaped by its setting rather than just pasted on, and I enjoyed Dorothy’s voice and the concept of the generation ship, the “books” that hold people’s memories, and the ingenious crime that makes use of that. Plus, it’s nice to have a detective fascinated by knitting, and shaped by a long life.

I’d be curious about more stories in the same world, and a few more peeks at things like the Antikythera Club, Crimes Committed, and of course, Dorothy and her interest in Violet. And knitting.

This is a quick read super satisfying sci-fi novella from Olivia Waite. Waite offers a future where humans upload their memories into books, meaning that murder is on the decline, as the victim can just be re-downloaded into a new body. Instead of heading for the dystopic, however, Waite's ship feels more gently utopic...with the recognition of loopholes that stop this utopia from seeming sinister and instead framing it as made from various ways that humans could treat one another better than we do.

3.5 stars

This little sci-fi murder mystery novella is wildly different from the historical romance I have read from Olivia Waite, but her skill at writing sympathetic and slightly mischievous characters remains.

I’d characterize the genre a little more as science fantasy than science fiction, because the futuristic ‘science’ of distilling memories into cocktails and uploading human consciousness into books is much more imaginatively than technically based; however, it takes place on a spaceship and the mystery is solved through deductive reasoning, so it’s certainly grounded in a sense of psychological reality if not the ‘real world.’

There’s an endearing Woodhousean quality to the characters, who despite being three-century-old personalities in recycled bodies careening through the stars all have a charmingly early- to mid-century well-to-do Britishness about their mannerisms (also reminiscent of Agatha Christie adaptations).

While I do think the novella length worked (high praise from me, who often finds novellas leaving me feeling a little short-changed) I really wish that knitting (one of the main characters’ (reported) principle hobbies) had played a much larger role in the plot. Hopefully it will do so in future installments.

Cozy sci-fi mystery? On a spaceship? What is not to love. I wish this was a full length novel because all I can say is I want more. It feels like an episode of a TV show and I want a whole season. I loved Dorothy and the drunk sounding AI.

Though this story very much had an in-medias-res start in terms of the world construct, I like the narrator's voice and found the reveals of the plot structure easy to identify. I just wish some of them had been clearer sooner. Overall it was a quick pleasant read. I would recommend it to fans of Murderbot and other cozy sci-fi reads.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Thanks to NetGalley for this gifted ARC!

If you love detective stories with a sci-fi twist, Murder by Memory is a must-read. Set aboard a ship traveling to a new planet—a journey that takes over a thousand years—the story introduces a fascinating concept: memories are stored and uploaded into new bodies, allowing people to live lifetime after lifetime.

Our main character, a detective, unexpectedly wakes up in a new body after her previous death, only to find herself in the middle of a murder investigation. Someone has been killed, and she has to solve the case while adjusting to her unfamiliar form.

I was hooked from the start! The mystery was engaging, the pacing kept me turning pages, and the world-building on the ship was so well done. This book sets the stage for more stories to come, and I could easily see it becoming a TV series in the future. If you love detective mysteries with a unique setting, this one is for you!

⭐ Releases March 18, 2025! Highly recommend for sci-fi and mystery lovers. ⭐

I do love a little genre mixer, and this one is a murder mystery that takes place on a space ship, so it squarely fit my interests. I didn’t know it was a novella, and I was disappointed when I figured it out about halfway through, because I wanted to spend more time in the fascinating world that Waite built up, where our consciousness never runs out of bodies to reanimate into. It did take away from the “murder” aspect a bit, but then the stakes are appropriately raised. I very much enjoyed the characters sketched out, and would love to spend more time with them! And it gave me a reprieve from a reading slump, bless.