I’ve read two novels recently–Charles Stross’s Season of Skulls and Martha Wells’s Witch King–which the authors admit were affected by the Pandemic. Now, here’s a third: Mary Robinette Kowal’s SF mystery, The Spare Man (2023).
The Spare Man–just check out the cover artwork above–is basically The Thin Man in space. Here’s the book’s marketing hype:
Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse. Armed with banter, martinis and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling—and keep the real killer from striking again.
The Spare Man is basically a locked room mystery because the murders occur on a spaceship in mid-flight. Complicating factors are Tesla’s chronic pain (from a workplace accident) and PTSD. Tesla travels with her service dog, Gimlet, who plays a role in the murder investigation. Kowal presents a recipe for a different classic cocktail at the start of every chapter in the book.
I really wanted to like The Spare Man but some of the cutesy dialogue and plotting put me off. GRADE: C
I believe I’d have the same reaction you did!
Bob, Great Minds think alike!
Sounds smart but derivative. I’ll wait for the Movie.
Dan, I finished reading AESOP’S TRAVELS. It’s your best book yet! I’ll write a review and post it on this blog later this week! Thanks for sharing your latest work with me! And I have occasionally be referred to as “beefy.”
Yeah, I hate to admit it, but I agree. I really, really liked Kowal’s Lady Astronaut of Mars series, which won her two Hugo Awards (for novelette and then for novel), but this was just…I don’t know, so lightweight it floated off the page. I just couldn’t care about the characters or get into it at all.
Jeff, I shared your reaction to THE SPARE MAN. Light-weight fluff!
As you might recall, I was in my second high school with her now-husband, Robert Kowal. I’ve met MRK once, and it wasn’t the best encounter, so I’ve probably let that influence me too much in not reading her work…some of her public pronouncements also kinda reinforced that sense…glad to know that the Lady Astronaut series has some support among the crew here…that might be my first novel or so I finally take on.