Books Martha Wells Book Club Martha Wells Book Club: Fugitive Telemetery In which Murderbot solves a murder mystery… By Alex Brown | Published on January 26, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share I have been counting down the days to when Fugitive Telemetry would pop up on my book club reread. When I finally sat down to reread it, I initially planned to squeeze in a few minutes before bed then read the rest over the weekend in a few days. Instead I ended up staying up way too late and consuming the entire thing in one sitting.  We open with a dead human. The body is in the concourse on Preservation Station, and no one knows who the person was. Murderbot and Mensah are stuck in a holding pattern. They’re waiting for GrayCris to make their inevitable move, and that tension makes it difficult for them to get comfortable or make plans for the future.When the corpse turns up Senior Officer Indah is ill-equipped to handle the investigation on her own. As a SecUnit, Murderbot has handled its fair share of murder investigations, and as an entertainment feed fanatic, it has consumed an ungodly number of murder mysteries, both of which make it the prime candidate for partnering with Indah as far as Mensah is concerned. (Murderbot and Indah would rather not, thank you very much.) As far as Mensah is concerned, Murderbot might as well be useful while it waits for GrayCris. Mensah is already filling her time with her leadership responsibilities, not to mention avoiding going to trauma therapy. The pair also need to determine if the dead human was part of a GrayCris attack without overwhelming Station Security. Mensah’s iron will prevails, and Pin-Lee draws up an air-tight temporary employment contract hiring SecUnit out to Station Security. Murderbot’s insight into the Corporate Rim and its hacking skills complement Indah’s knowledge of the station and her protectiveness more than either is willing to admit. Eventually, the corpse leads to other victims and a pack of despicable criminals. The ending is bittersweet. The victims are rescued but the larger corporate scheme continues. It’s a small victory but a vital one.  Importantly, the mystery could not have been solved without the help of the bots under guardianship on Preservation Station. At this point in its journey, Murderbot is still working through its feelings about being a construct under guardianship to humans. It likes the human that holds its guardianship, but it also likes its freedom. It hasn’t yet figured out how to have both. In the previous books, there is a clear delineation between bots and constructs. SecUnit treats bots almost like children. It appeases them to get them to do what it wants, or simply overpowers them or orders them around. On Preservation Station, however, the bots, while not the most complex entities around, are able to think, make choices, and extrapolate. They may not have as much processing power as a construct, but they are people in the same way a construct is a person. Their brains, so to speak, just work differently. It’s so cute to see them have inside jokes and nicknames for each other, and to see Murderbot be genuinely surprised (and a little annoyed) at that. Once again, Murderbot proves to be an unreliable narrator. What it thinks it knows about the world is much smaller than what is actually true about the world.  Something that I’ve heard a lot from fans of the series is their frustration with how Fugitive Telemetry was published after Network Effect despite taking place before it in the chronology. After reading both fairly close together (instead of having nearly a year of wait time between them, much of which was spent dealing with the hell that was the worst of the covid pandemic), it actually makes a lot of sense. Now, I have no idea if Wells always planned for this time switcheroo in her publication schedule or if she made the decision to swap the chronology later on, but I think it was the right choice.  This book adds subtext to Murderbot’s relationship with ART. Now readers know Murderbot has seen bots and constructs living full lives where they make their own choices outside the needs and commands of humans and the lengths they’ll go to ensure that independence. It reframes ART’s interactions with its crew. We know now that ART and Miki aren’t anomalies in liking humans anymore than Murderbot is an anomaly in wanting to hack its governor module. It teases some interesting possibilities for Three as well. Network Effect also serves as a sort of denouement on the GrayCris saga. The story-within-a-story about the augmented human mercenaries hired by GrayCris as assassins is their last gasp. Fugitive Telemetry acts as a good break between that original storyline and the new one coming with System Collapse involving Barish-Estranza. Not only that, this book and the last deal with independent operators aiding enslaved humans trying to escape corporate bondage contracts, which also harkens back to Murderbot’s own flight from its company overlords. The first book functioned a bit like a murder mystery as well, so lots of little parallels.  For new readers who might be intimidated with 4 novellas and a novel, Fugitive Telemetry is a good launching pad. Like All Systems Red, it’s fairly self-contained; it has a lot of interesting action and fun dialogue that don’t require any outside knowledge or lore. Whatever you need to know about Mensah for the purposes of this story, you get on the page, with just enough enticement to make new readers want to learn more. Same with Murderbot’s background. For long-time fans, it offers a lot of tantalizing new worldbuilding, particularly when it comes to bot society on Preservation Alliance. And it fills in some of the gaps left in Network Effect.  After rereading Fugitive Telemetry, I think this novella is my second favorite book in the series thus far, with All Systems Red as my first. Is cozy hardboiled detective a thing? Because that’s what it feels like to me. I doubt we’ll get enough seasons of the TV show to cover this book, but I would love to see those actors do this storyline. What a kick! Next month we’re reading System Collapse, which jumps us forward in time to after Network Effect. Let’s see where all this Barish-Estranza stuff goes.[end-mark] Buy the Book System Collapse Martha Wells The Murderbot Diaries (Volume 7) Buy Book System Collapse Martha Wells The Murderbot Diaries (Volume 7) The Murderbot Diaries (Volume 7) Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Martha Wells Book Club: <i>Fugitive Telemetery</i> appeared first on Reactor.