Hugos 2023: The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

This is a science fiction murder mystery, set in the 2070s aboard a Luna-Mars cruise; it's a bit of a Thin Man take, I guess, except I've never seen any of those films. (My knowledge of The Thin Man entirely derives from knowing that DC's Elongated Man is also a bit of a Thin Man take.) That is to say, the protagonist is married to a retired detective who is framed for murder, so she must investigate the crime to exonerate him.

Published: 2022
Acquired: July 2023
Read: August 2023

It has some interesting stuff going for it: reasonably consistent worldbuilding (which is important for a murder mystery), cocktail recipes as chapter epigraphs (some of which I would like to try), some fun stuff with a lawyer on an ever-increasing communications delay, accurate-feeling depictions of disability and service animals, but also good extrapolation of how they might work in the future.

I'm not a terribly prolific reader of mysteries, but I have read my fair share (mostly Sue Grafton and Elizabeth George), and I did not think this was a very good example of the genre. It takes a while for it to get started: the murder happens pretty early on, but it's over eighty pages in before the protagonist actually starts asking questions. There are a lot of characters who are technically suspects, but none of them really feel like suspects; you as a reader are never like, "oh i bet that guy did it" because you are not really given enough to grab on to with all the many characters to be suspicious of them. Or even to be not suspicious of them, which is itself suspicious in a murder mystery. There are a few too many coincidences: three owners of major technology companies just happen to be on this cruise. One character has a completely coincidental link to the backstory of the protagonist and another completely coincidental link to the backstory of her husband. The solution depends on a piece of information not revealed to the reader until the end... but it felt like something that could have very easily but subtly been revealed much earlier to good effect.

I also struggled with the protagonist and her husband. She was basically fine, but I felt like Kowal is capable of better character work than we ultimately got with her. There are a lot of good ingredients to her—genius inventor, wealthy heiress, PTSD sufferer—but I didn't think they came together in a meaningful way. As for him, I struggled to understand his reasons for not wanting to get involved. I mean, sure, he's retired... but if you're the murder suspect and shipboard security clearly incompetent and the murderer is still on the loose, maybe your retirement rationale of "i got too famous to be effective" isn't very relevant any more!

(Despite the repeated assertions of someone I talked to on LibraryThing, this is clearly not set in Kowal's "Lady Astronaut" universe, but our own future.)