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A review by alesia_charles
Click Here For Murder by Donna Andrews
3.0
I was bemusedly amused by this book, which was published in 2003 and is therefore woefully out of date as far as computer technology is concerned. It is, to my surprise, a science fiction novel written for mystery readers - one of the main characters is a sentient computer program named Turing Hopper. As a result, it doesn't "sound" like an SF novel to an SF reader.
The plot is somewhat convoluted and relies partly on events that happened in the previous volume of the series. Basically, a character known to Turing and her friends is murdered. The story follows their collective efforts to find out why he was murdered, which leads them into exploring things like online games of dubious cultural value (which no regular SF reader would have to have explained in detail), live-action role-playing games (ditto), and paintball (which maybe did need explanation in 2003?). It's complicated.
In a way, both the datedness of the tech (aside from the sentient program thing) and the non-SF assumptions of the story make it come off, to me, as if it was a historical mystery written at some point in the future when artificial intelligences are common, and the author is using the story as a vehicle to explore and explain the social issues revolving around computers back at the beginning of things. As a technophile I appreciate the author's care in having two characters point out that whatever people get up to online is not much different from what they'd get up to if they didn't have computers - that is, it's not the technology's fault that some people are thieves, or pedophiles, or socially disaffected.
Anyway, it was interesting to read. I'm not sure if I'll seek out the other book or books, though.
The plot is somewhat convoluted and relies partly on events that happened in the previous volume of the series. Basically, a character known to Turing and her friends is murdered. The story follows their collective efforts to find out why he was murdered, which leads them into exploring things like online games of dubious cultural value (which no regular SF reader would have to have explained in detail), live-action role-playing games (ditto), and paintball (which maybe did need explanation in 2003?). It's complicated.
In a way, both the datedness of the tech (aside from the sentient program thing) and the non-SF assumptions of the story make it come off, to me, as if it was a historical mystery written at some point in the future when artificial intelligences are common, and the author is using the story as a vehicle to explore and explain the social issues revolving around computers back at the beginning of things. As a technophile I appreciate the author's care in having two characters point out that whatever people get up to online is not much different from what they'd get up to if they didn't have computers - that is, it's not the technology's fault that some people are thieves, or pedophiles, or socially disaffected.
Anyway, it was interesting to read. I'm not sure if I'll seek out the other book or books, though.