DCS Kat Frank of the Warwickshire police, back too early from bereavement leave, demands her boss put her back to work. Fine; he saddles her with the first AI policeman and sets them to work on cold cases involving missing people, mostly as a way to totally disprove the utility of AI in police work.

Lock, the AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entities) in question, is the brainchild of one Professor Okonedo, who has an enormous ax to grind in the success of this program and doesn’t want an overseer no matter how storied or capable, as Kat is.

My team and I have spent the past four years developing an AIDE with algorithms that are free from bias or prejudice of any kind, so that we can use AI to drive more evidence-based decision-making.

Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t go over well with either Kat or Chief Superintendent McLeish, but the program is being pushed by the Home Secretary so Kat finally agrees to head it up. Her team choses two missing persons cases to review, which almost immediately turns into an open investigation involving a total of five missing young people and a sixth who goes missing during the investigation.

The plot of this first novel is original and riveting (although I will say that I was thoroughly pissed off that the murderer got off so easily). It could have stood on its own merits without the introduction of the AI.  

The science fiction part of the novel, Lock the AI, I find more problematic. He’s a strong character and one of the things I find most realistic is the positive reaction he gets from the younger people in the novel. 

Cam wolfed down the spaghetti, barely bothering to chew in between the questions he fired at Lock: can you feel any physical sensations at all? (No.) Do you wish you could? (No.) Do our thinking processes seem unbearably slow to you? (Yes.) What is the strangest thing about humans? (That you assume you are superior to AI and that it is I who must learn from you.)

What I find silliest is Kat constantly wondering if Lock is being sarcastic or not in his responses to her orders while at the same time insisting Lock is an “it,” not a “he.”

The second novel continues their story some time later, with more solved cases under their belts, and Kat insists that her boss put them on an active homicide case. Fortuitously, the body of a crucified man is found and her team dispatched to work the case. Days later there is another victim and Kat and the team race to find the killer before there are any more and before McLeish brings in the big dogs to take over the case. This plot is weaker than the first but still interesting, with a more sympathetic killer than most, and it turns out an AIDE needs a human partner after all.

At least until they build a body to download his consciousness into it. Which is coming. There’s a robot mopping the floors of the house I’m in right now.

Very well written, a good cast of characters, and two solid plots the first of which is superb. Recommended.

Book Review Monday Chatter In the Blink of an Eye Jo Callaghan Leave No Trace