Unanticipated life, rather than death, demands the attention of ship's detective Dorothy Gentleman when an infant mysteriously appears at her nephew's door in Nobody's Baby, the delightful second science fiction cozy mystery by Olivia Waite (The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows).
The population of the Fairweather generation starship is supposed to be fixed at 10,000 for its centuries-long voyage. As passengers age and die, their consciousnesses are copied from their memory books in the library into new adult bodies, engineered to be unable to reproduce. Yet somehow Dorothy's nephew, Ruthie, and his husband, John, have found an infant in a basket on their doorstep, and now Ruthie is asking his aunt questions about babies. Furthermore, the baby appears to be well cared for. Dorothy sets about investigating who the child's parents are and how he came to be abandoned, but other logistical questions persist. For instance, with no allowance for births, will the baby be able to be classed as a passenger and granted the right to have his memory backed up?
As in Murder by Memory, the first Dorothy Gentleman novella, Waite melds a charming cast of characters with a mystery that takes full advantage of the possibilities in a generation ship's distinctive environment. Dorothy's shrewd eye and sharp turns of a phrase make her a most witty narrator. Although those who read the first mystery might want to see more of Violet, Dorothy's potential love interest, Waite includes enough hints here to keep readers hoping for more romance to come. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library