2004 SF/mystery. Turing Hopper, an AI emergent from research assistant
software, follows up on a lead to an old enemy.
Another step away from SF and towards cosy detective fiction. A
credit card belonging to the main villain of the previous book gets
used in an apparent case of fraud, and Turing and her human allies
follow up.
Unfortunately it's not very interesting cosy detective fiction. If
you've never previously encountered credit card fraud I suppose it
might have something to offer, but it's a very drawn-out investigation
of a remarkably simple case. There's absolutely no progress in the
larger plot; all the things left unresolved at the end of Click Here
for Murder are still unresolved now. This was a great disappointment
to me, but the story in itself is still enjoyable.
Claudia, the private eye from Miami who appeared first in that book,
is back and welcome, but there are also several new minor characters
(a lawyer and a computer techie) who get relatively little narrative
time, so remain mostly undeveloped, while at the same time distracting
from the long-term characters of Maude, Tim and Turing.
KingFischer is almost absent here, which is a shame as it's one of the
more interesting of the proto-AI community. Is this a lead-up to its
breakout into full sapience? Hard to tell, but in this book it's
another frustrating distraction.
On the other hand, when we do get the three old principals, things
start to shine. Maude is trying to carve out some personal life from
her two jobs; Tim is making a real go of his private detective work
now that he's got over the noir image; and Turing is still trying to
understand the human world. There's some good material on
surveillance, safety and privacy, though it never quite gets past the
assumption of good faith: several of the discussions here could be
shut down with "yes, we know you are a benevolent AI, but there will
be others some day and we don't want to trust them before we get to
know them even though we now trust you".
There's even less actual computing in this book than in the last: no
MMORPGs, just straight-up surveillance and investigation, with some
remote cameras but that's about it.
Followed by Delete All Suspects.
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