Detective Dorothy Gentleman investigates the surprising (impossible?) appearance of a baby on the Fairweather…

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?

This is the second novella starring Dorothy Gentleman, a ship’s detective on the HMS Fairweather, an interstellar passenger liner transporting people to a new life on a new planet. Gently paced, well-written and engaging, it’s another very good read from Waite, and fans of the first are sure to enjoy this.

What is a detective to do, when a newborn baby appears on an interstellar liner whose passengers are supposed to be incapable of reproducing? A journey that will take centuries, the passengers are frequently “rebodied” when their living vessels wear out (their consciousnesses are stored in the memory library, and implanted into their new bodies). To avoid any population control issues, the passengers’ bodies are sterile. So, when Gentleman’s nephew appears holding a baby, wondering what he should do, the ship’s detective is confronted by some new tricky questions: Where did the baby come from? Who are its parents? What is its legal situation on the Fairweather?

Compared to Murder By Memory, the mystery in Nobody’s Baby felt a little less important than some of the scene-setting. My personal preference would have been to have a bit more of a mystery, but I still enjoyed the book. There’s some interesting new world-building (“ship-building”?), as Waite shows readers some of the entertainment options available to passengers, such as the flickers and skimmers.

Fans of the first Dorothy Gentleman book, and cosy mysteries in general, will likely enjoy this very much. I’m still not sure what, overall, I think of the various “cosy” genres; but I nevertheless enjoyed this, and I would certainly be interested in reading more books in the series.

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Olivia Waite’s Nobody’s Baby is due to be published by TorDotCom in North America and in the UK, on March 10th, 2026.

Also on CR: Review of Murder by Memory

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Review copy received via NetGalley