Murder by Memory is a murder mystery queer space opera with an added pinch of existential horror squeezed into the span of 103 pages. Waite does a masterful job shaping out a human history of a world on pause and with a unique way preserving the living memory of earth while on an interstellar journey spanning lifetimes. The concept of memory preservation taking the form of data storage, filing away memories and lives in a library for future use and as a form of rest is unique. Where most science fiction I've consumed relies on cryogenic sleep to keep memories of earth alive in the minds of those traveling to or colonizing remote planets, the world Waite creates extends life through a sort of cloning process compatible with a data record upload. This cloning is imperfectly human, which I appreciated when reading this in 2025, seeing a resurgence of eugenicist ideals on the internet, in science fiction, and in the rhetoric of the unqualified nepotism hires currently in the highest medical offices in the United States. The characters bodies age and die. Issues stemming from expected and unexpected genetic complications and the follies of old age still impact them as they live and die in new bodies. More memories are made and those that remain from their time on earth lives on.

As the start of the series, setting and characters are very well fleshed-out, setting the groundwork for future books while still neatly tying up the main plot of the story.  Waite's writing is very intentional with her language. Every word progresses the story. She makes a murder scene beautiful in its detail, defines the shape of a forest aboard their ship, and makes secondary characters interesting and multi-dimensional. The plot starts with an emergency protocol in which the ship's detective, Dorothy, who had had herself shelved after a loss, is automatically woken up and inserted into the nearest body by the electrical storm-addled ship's AI when her memory book is destroyed. Investigating the events that lead her to being reconstituted leads her to uncovering a murder, layers of conspiracy, and a desire to live. At the start, everyone and everything is battened down in the hopes of avoiding injury and damage to the ship, it's AI, and the stored memories. Dorothy draws the reader through a ghost ship, alone in the dark in normally vibrant and busy thoroughfares on her way to find her nephew Ruthie, and his mysterious, but loving partner. This style of storytelling allows the world to be unfolded before the reader in easily consumable pieces before we're introduced to the hustle and bustle of life on the HMS Fairweather.

With the extended lifespans of the characters and their perpetual rejuvenation, age becomes more of a theoretical concept. It was really neat to see Dorothy, who despite being in Gloria's young body, understand herself to be elderly, as she was when she last died. It was neat to see her grappling with what it means to be young and feel attraction again. I look forward to seeing more of her relationship (if you can call it that) with Violet, as more of the series is published. Their shared love of knitting has so much wholesome potential, despite the circumstances of their meeting.