4 ⭐ CW: death/murder 

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite is the first book in the Dorothy Gentlemen series, a cozy sci-fi mystery novella. I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This was pitched as Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple. This was a fun, short read, with plenty of queer characters, perfect for murder mystery fans. 

We follow Dorothy, a ship's detective, as she wakes up aboard the HMS Fairweather, a generation ship in space. On this ship, all passengers have immortality for the long journey, and are provided a new body upon request, and their minds are stored in a library. Dorothy wakes up to find she is not in a body of her own. In fact she shouldn't be awake at all. Someone else aboard the ship has been found murdered. Dorothy must find out why the passenger was murdered and why her own memory book was erased. 

I like Dorothy as a character. She's a no nonsense auntie type. Although she's in the body of a much younger person, she's definitely got older lady energy. We see her relationship with her nephew Ruthie, who helped design the ship, and learn a bit about her before she stored herself in the library. All the characters we see in the story are queer, including Dorothy. The mystery felt quite low stakes since no one really does forever on the ship unless their mind book is destroyed. It wasn't a difficult mystery to figure out, but the way it was discovered and explained was interesting. I do wish it had been a little longer, so we could have gotten to know Dorothy a little more and gotten to know more about the Fairweather, and why these people are on a generation ship in the first place. 

This was a light and easy read, and I would be interested in reading a book two. Murder by Memory releases on March 28th.