MY MURDER

A young wife, mother, and serial-killer victim seeks answers after she is brought back by cloning.

In Williams’ adult debut, Tell the Machine Goodnight (2018), a Kirkus Prize finalist, the author cleverly conjured a near future in which technology could both remove us from and deliver us back to ourselves and one another. With this suspenseful, smart sophomore effort—a briskly paced story with charming characters at its core—Williams again imagines a near-futuristic, science-altered reality that offers an intriguing perspective on the push-pull of family and freedom. Lou, a 30-ish wife and mother of a 9-month-old daughter, whose work entails offering therapeutic hugs to people in a virtual reality setting, returns to her old life along with several other victims of a serial killer thanks to a controversial government cloning program. As Lou struggles to readjust following her murder, supported by her sweet, supportive husband, Silas, she finds herself dogged by lacunae in her memory: How, exactly, did her murder go down? What happened in the hours leading up to and just after it? And how does she, ostensibly the same woman in a replicated body, differ from the woman she was before? With other members of her serial killer survivors’ group, cloned women who convene weekly to process their emotions and experiences, Lou goes in search of answers. The search propels her—and us—along unpredictable paths to destinations that shed light not only on Lou’s life choices, but also those we all face.

Williams has delivered an intelligent, insightful murder mystery that illuminates her imagined world and our own.