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

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.

A wild baby appears! Dorothy Gentleman, ship's detective, is put to the test once again when an infant is mysteriously left on her nephew’s doorstep. Fertility is supposed to be on pause during the Fairweather’s journey across the stars—but humans have a way of breaking any rule you set them. Who produced this child, and why did they then abandon him? And as her nephew and his partner get more and more attached, how can Dorothy prevent her colleague and rival detective, Leloup, a stickler for law and order, from classifying the baby as a stowaway or a piece of luggage?

Told from Dorothy’s delightfully shrewd POV, this novella series is an ode to the cozy mystery taken to the stars with a fresh new sci-fi take—perfect for fans of the plot-twisty narratives of Dorothy Sayers and Ann Leckie.

Dorothy is a detective on a spaceship from earth destined to eventually land on a new planet. The voyage is a long one, already three centuries have passed, and with finite space the population is kept steady by an interesting process. People’s memories are downloaded into “book” in the ship’s library and when they “die” they get a new version of their body. Of course this means there are no children on board, there will be no babies or children until planetfall so how to explain the very real baby left outside Dorothy’s nephew’s door?

Like the first Dorothy Gentleman book this was a quick read, a bit longer than a short story but not really novella length. The murder this time does not result in the permanent death of the victim, unlike our first outing, but the search for the baby’s parents and the ultimate fate of the baby keep Dorothy busy. I am enjoying this series, I look forward to learning more about Dorothy, her nephew Rutherford, his partner John and now the baby Peregrine. There is also passing mention of some secret about the origins of the journey being unsettling which I am really interested to learn. Recommended ~~ Stephanie L Bannon

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