Set on a colony encircling Jupiter in a distant future, Malka Older’s genre-blending novella The Mimicking of Known Successes opens with Investigator Mossa looking into the disappearance of a university scholar assumed to have jumped or been pushed from a remote transit platform, thereafter presumably perishing in the gas giant’s freezing, punishing atmosphere. Back at the university she recruits her once-girlfriend Pleiti, also a scholar, to assist with her investigation, the two of them attempting to understand what might have prompted an almost universally disliked man to disappear. The deeper they dig the more the mystery thickens, becoming more dangerous than they could have expected, while their unexpected reunion inevitably stirs up old memories and emotions once thought laid to rest.
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