The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal. The high concept pitch of this story would be
Nick and Nora Charles (and Asta) solve a mystery on a cruise ship in space. The idea is charming and appealing, and Kowal pulls off that pervasive sense of sexiness, privileged egalitarianism, and brio that William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Skippy brought to the Thin Man movies. What got in the way for me was the integration of the technology into the fair-play nature of the mystery. In a mundane mystery, it can be presumed that reader knows how elevators and train schedules and delivery vans and telephones work, and what is plausible or not in any given set of circumstances. In a science-fictional setting, the reader doesn't have an intuitive sense of how the communication "net" works or how "spoofers" work to get around detection or how the spinning of the ship to simulate gravity creates an erratic Coriolis effect on different levels, and whether or how any of these are important to the story and solving the mystery. We also spend an awful lot of time hearing how the heroine dials up or down the pain-suppressant and mobility-assistive tech within her body without it really having any effect on the story or character development.
Nonetheless, I didn't put it down, and while it meandered a bit on a somewhat bumpy trip, it certainly brought me to a satisfactory conclusion.
Special note: This is the second book in as many months that begins each chapter with a drink recipe!
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