About a month ago a large sinkhole opened in the interstate a few miles from where I live, and it has wrecked absolute chaos on my commute since as it closed the eastbound lanes of said interstate, and the detours send everyone directly into my commute. My peaceable 35-minute drive to work has bloomed to over an hour and is unpredictable so I’m leaving even earlier to ensure I get to work on time and don’t get docked pay, again. So… I have significantly increased my in-car time.
To deal with this I’ve been listening to some longer podcast episodes, but I also thought it would be a good time to do some audiobook reading. Tress of the Emerald Sea was my first in that vein. Looking for my next listen I scurried to NetGalley and requested the Audio ARC of Olivia Waite’s Murder by Memory as it published this week. This delightful novella was the perfect companion for a couple days as yet another sinkhole opened and now the westbound lanes of the interstate are also being diverted, and my commute home is also twice as long as it usually is (and all the repair work is going to take MONTHS).
What I’m saying is my mood was absolutely suited to exploring the world of Murder by Memory as Dorothy Gentleman is awakened from being shelved in a body that isn’t hers and without warning and must investigate what caused that all to happen. This is a cozy mystery where the learning about the world Dorothy lives in provides the stakes. Dorothy is one of 10,000 people on a generation ship sailing through space on their way to a new home. It’s been three centuries already and instead of staying in cryo-sleep people live and age and when it’s time to die they are provided a new body, and their consciousness and genotype are loaded in from the saved files in the Library when they are ready. This means that residents of the Fairweather have changed their relationship with death.
In addition to introducing us to the world of the Fairweather is the mystery of how Dorothy ended up in the body she’s in, how her book in the Library containing her self was deleted, why her nephew had backups created of the Detectives (of which Dorothy is one), and what is going on with weird financial transactions and deaths. It was highly enjoyable to spend time with Dorothy as her professional nosiness is used to solve the mysteries and the narration by Blair Baker was so well delivered that I didn’t listen to this at 1.25 like I usually do and instead luxuriated in it at 1.0 speed. Highly recommend this couple hour audiobook if you are in the mood for a quick hit of sci-fi mystery. Waite has a way with writing feisty queer women who are about their jobs and love their family and friends and it was just what I needed.
I received an Audio ARC of this book via MacMillan Audio and Tor Publishing. It has not affected the contents of the review, just its timing. The book is available now.