This is not my usual cuppa; despite the ‘futureness’ of the setting, it’s really just a cozy murder mystery.  Not that I mind that, of course; but I’m not the reader who tries to solve the mystery as I read.  I’m too lazy for that; I want my author to tell me what I need to know.  So, based on all that, I’m quite unable to tell you, a potential reader, if the author does a good job keeping the reader guessing.  I’m always guessing…

Dorothy works on an interstellar generation ship as a Ship’s Detective.  And since their science and technology enable one to transfer memories from one ailing or aging body to a newer one, Dorothy has been knocking about for quite some time.  So, while she isn’t necessarily thrown when she wakes in a new body, she is necessarily confused by whose body she is in.  The ship houses a ginormous reference library of every passenger’s and employee’s memory.  Most people go to the library frequently to keep their memories updated.  And the last time Dorothy updated she had chosen to stay on the shelf for a bit; a sort of mental vacation, one might say.  So…why had the Ship decanted her against her wishes, and why was she in a body that obviously had belonged to someone else?

So, the setup is this:  the Ship had encountered a magnetic storm which tended to discombobulate it, and all crew and passengers were locked in.  The body that Dorothy found herself in was a woman named Gloria Vowell and hers was the only available body that Ship could use when its favorite detective – that’s Dorothy, of course – had her memory book erased.  It’s supposed to be rather impossible to erase a memory book.  The next perplexing bit of information from Ship was that there was, apparently, a dead body onboard.  As a detective, Dorothy would love to question the only person walking about the ship when every single other soul was locked in.  The only problem, as she saw it, was that she, Dorothy, was currently inhabiting that body and Gloria could not be questioned.

I can say that the plot was nice and twisty, and that the cast of characters was not overly plentiful.  Too many characters and too many motives does tend to lose my interest.  And with only 100 pages to play with, the author couldn’t make it too complex.  So this small little mystery was actually surprisingly fun for me.  I wouldn’t turn down another story from this author.   ~~ Catherine Book

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