Murder by Memory

112 pages

English language

Published 2025 by Melia Publishing Services Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-250-34224-9
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

(1 review)

Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in this sci-fi ode to the cozy mystery, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective.

1 edition

reviewed Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Murder by Memory

This cozy starship mystery novella was billed to me as "Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple" and, sorry book, but I'm going to go with no on both counts. It has vibes of all of these things, but no depth to the mystery, characters, or worldbuilding.

The worldbuilding is a bit wild. I appreciate (but also laugh at) the way that the starship quite explicitly has no cops, only detectives with investigative power as a way to get around cop-centric detective fiction. The book also has UBI, which is a weird concept to extend forward in time to an intergenerational starship that has mind upload. It's all just a little too light that it doesn't hang together.

Ultimately, the mystery is too easily unraveled by the protagonist, but the details are not something the reader could have known about ahead of time. Largely, this feels like it comes from the complication …