A ship's detective is rudely awakened to a plot to kill not only peoples' bodies but also the minds backed up in the ship's library in Murder by Memory, a charming science fiction mystery by Olivia Waite (The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics; The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows).
Dorothy Gentleman was supposed to be taking a break before being decanted into a fresh body. Instead, she wakes in a body that belongs to someone else. The book in the interstellar ship's library into which her memory had been copied was destroyed, so to protect her, the ship loaded her backup into the nearest body. Also, the ship informs her, someone is dead.
Waite weaves a twisty new take on the classic detective yarn with a delightful cast of characters. Dorothy has a shrewd mind honed over multiple lifetimes and uses it not only for keen detecting skills but in the playful turns of phrase in her narration. Some members of the crew quickly realize that she is not Gloria Vowell, whose body she inhabits, but others take her for who she appears to be--which is sometimes an advantage, but very much not so when dealing with Violet, Gloria's stunningly beautiful, sharply observant, and repeatedly wronged partner. A ship where death need not be permanent offers intriguing possibilities for murder plots; the fact that it can be when a memory book is destroyed keeps the stakes appropriately high. Readers will be eager for more from Dorothy. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library