REVIEW: Nobody’s Baby (Dorothy Gentleman Book 2) by Olivia Waite
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 …
Dear Ms. Waite,
Last year’s start to this series, “Murder by Memory,” was so intriguing that I was thrilled to see this follow-up entry. Once again, it’s a closed-spaceship mystery with blessedly little info dumping. Readers who haven’t read the first novella can start here and do fine.
So Dorothy Gentleman, along with thousands of others, is on a one way trip to a new planet! Yes, it’s going to take hundreds of years even at their (massive) spaceship’s (incredible) speed but that’s okay. They’ve thought that all out and people age up to 75 or so and then their bodies are reengineered and their memories (which they update in their memory books) are plunked into them and they start over at age twenty, because who wants to go through puberty again, amirite?
Dorothy is one of the detectives on-board and her nephew – brilliant wizz kid – writes code for the spaceship. In the previous book, Ruthie (Rutherford) and John have hooked up and are now married. Arriving at speed at Dorothy’s apartment door, they present her with the baby that has been left on their doorstep. Which shouldn’t be happening. Due to space constraints on the ship, everybody got temporarily fixed (dunno how, it just is). The number of “amazed faces” through the course of the book is hilarious.
So who’s the baby, who’re the mother and father, and how did this thing that isn’t supposed to happen, happen?
Dorothy has been around the block a bit as they’ve been traveling for over three hundred years so she knows rules and regs and has access to databases that most people don’t even know about much less have access to. Yes, it’s a baby and no it’s not someone regressed back by mistake as initially the ship has no knowledge of the child’s existence. It doesn’t take long to find the mama who is all “amazed face.” How can she not know?! Well, there’s a way and it goes back to a means of entertainment. Why did she hide her pregnancy and the child’s birth? For Reasons that make sense due to rules and regs.
Dorothy has to comb through the ‘who’s your mama?’ (easily done), ‘who’s your daddy?’ (also easy peasy and “amazed face”) and then why was the child left on her nephew’s doorstep (not so clear). We see more of the spaceship, learn more about what is supposed to happen once these space travelers reach their new home and how that can affect the baby.
The ultimate who and why behind everything brings up some thoughts I had while reading the story. Would I want to go on this journey far, far away from Old Earth and (mostly) everything and everybody I’ve known, plus be reborn over and over again? I think not. Rules and regs also rear their heads and Dorothy must make people see that rigid lockstep obedience to them sometimes needs to … bend a little. Public Pressure can still be Brought to Bear when needed.
I did wonder a few things such as why there’s so much paper and paper forms on this deep space ship where space is supposed to be at such a premium. I mean even now we’re doing so much stuff online. But okay, “paperwork” in the story actually is paperwork. Sigh. I liked this one and hope that we will see more. B
~Jayne
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This sounds entertaining, Jayne! I enjoyed the first book and look forward to reading this one, too.
@Kareni: I hope she will keep writing these.