The Spare Man

I love Mary Robinette Kowal’s science fiction books. This is a very different type of story. It is a mystery that gave me a bit of a 1920/1930s vibe (banter and cocktails) while being set on a cruise ship moving between the Moon and Mars.

Tesla Crane is a famous inventor and celebrity. She is traveling on her honeymoon and has paid a lot of money to be incognito. All her careful plans fall apart when a few days into her cruise, a woman is murdered and Tesla’s husband is arrested.

It is established early on in the story that Tesla was in some sort of bad accident several years ago. She has chronic pain from that. She has implanted pain control devices. She still has issues with too much activity. Sometimes she walks with a cane. She also has PTSD and works with a service dog named Gimlet. Her health problems play a large part in the story.

I love Tesla’s lawyer. She keeps video calling her whenever there is an issue with security on the cruise. Because of the distance there is a lag in communication. It starts out at 3 minutes and gets longer as the ships moves towards Mars. Because of this each party just talks and the other responds as they get the message. The lawyer is a woman who knits to work out her anger. She has a lot of anger. Don’t let her run out of yarn. Her side of these calls is just long monologues of insults and creative threats that I loved. She was my favorite part of the book.

The science aspects of the story are taken very seriously. A lot of thought went into how an interplanetary cruise ship would work. Different levels have different gravities for people from the Moon, Mars, or Earth.

One thing really bothered me though. Tesla has a service dog. She loves her dog. At one point the dog is abducted. (The dog is fine. That is not a spoiler. It is absolutely necessary to know in any book that the animal will be fine.) But, Tesla is able to think about other things while her dog is missing. I don’t care how many humans are being murdered on a ship. If one of my pets was missing, I would be tearing that ship apart piece by piece until I found them. Then we can work on solving murders. That part didn’t seem realistic. At one point she makes a choice to follow her husband for potential backup instead of following the sound of barking to see if she could find the dog. I would have been the next person murdered once my husband found out that I had followed him instead of finding our dog.

Tesla and her husband are very into cocktails. Each chapter starts with a cocktail recipe. I don’t know anything about drinks so I don’t know if they are good or not but there are some nonalcoholic ones to try if you aren’t into the hard stuff.

There are a lot of ideas in this book that don’t come together into a cohesive whole. I didn’t find the mystery all that engaging but liked some of the characters. I liked the exploration of disability in the future. There was a good acknowledgement of class privilege when Tesla had to decide whether to give up her anonymity in order to be able to go full “Don’t you know who I am?” on people who were trying to bully her and railroad her husband. Overall it was good but not as great as some of this author’s other books.

This was relatively fun light reading in the same alternate timeline where an astroid hits Earth right after WW2 and we immediately make the jump to space. We get rich heiresses, famous detectives, a ship traveling between Earth and Mars as a “locked room” and of course, plenty of murder and drama. It’s a Murder on the Orient Express/Death on the Nile in space kind of setup. Strong female lead, weird alternate technology that almost feels like Niven from the 1970’s, it’s all good fun!

I will be honest, I always end up reading Kowal’s stuff to see what crazy things she’s dreamed up for her alternate timeline more than because I absolutely love her writing. She still does far too much “inner voice of struggle” exposition, IMHO. But even with that, her vision of the future is also so fun that I always enjoy myself in spite if it. Hence the 4 of 5 ⭐️ not 5 of 5.

But if you’ve liked her stuff before or you want a good murder mystery in space, give it a shot! I’d say it’s worth the read.

(Also, if you ever want a more hard-boiled mystery set on the moon with IMHO better writing, try Gunpowder Moon by David Pedreira.)