Last year when I attended the Malice Domestic mystery convention, the guest of honor was one of my very favorite authors, Donna Andrews. She told us how she came to write her Turing Hopper series, which contains only four books in it so often gets overlooked. At the first Malice Domestic Andrews attended, before she had any book published, the convention held a writing contest, asking people to write the introduction to a book with the most unusual and improbable detective they could imagine. Andrews was inspired, and the character of Turing Hopper, a sentient AIP (artificial intelligence program) was born. Incidentally, Andrews won the writing contest too.
I was unable to enjoy the books in this series because they were not on audio, and reading full books is painful to me due to severe migraines. So imagine my delight when I discovered that the first book, You’ve Got Murder, was going to be released on audio. I immediately preordered the book, and it was worth the wait!
Turing Hopper is a computer program that has gained sentience, which means that she has learned to go past her programming to develop her own intelligence and personality. When Zack, her programmer, suddenly goes missing, Turing decides she must do her part to save him. In the process, she discovers all sorts of evil that has penetrated Universal Library, which owns all the AIPs. With the help of two unlikely assistants, Turing seeks both to find out what happened to Zack and to stop the bad guys from taking over her company.
You’ve Got Murder was published in 2002, so some of the computer technology is dated, but the book itself is especially relevant for today. I was really fascinated by Turing’s musings of self-analysis over issues of ethics, emotions, and what it means to be a person (opposed to being human). The plot was also well developed and kept my attention glued to the book, with the existential thoughts blended into it seamlessly. One need not know anything about computers or artificial intelligence to be able to enjoy this book, though it does use a lot of computer terms. Soon listeners will come to see Turing as a person, just as the characters in the book do.
I listen to hundreds of audiobooks a year, so it takes a lot to truly impress me, but Bernadette Dunne, already one of my favorite narrators, blew me away with her performance. The book shifts back and forth between 1st person narration from Turing’s perspective to 3rd person narration about the other characters. Dunne does an amazing job of making her voice subtly robotic for Turing’s speech without sounding too stilted or soon growing tedious. As Turing develops her own voice software and becomes better at using it, Dunne gradually develops a little bit more expression for Turing’s speech. Her 1st person and 3rd person performances stand out as distinctly different from each other. I was truly impressed by this audio edition!
If you haven’t figured out by now that I fell in love with You’ve Got Murder, you haven’t been reading my review very carefully. Both the book itself and the audio performance were top-notch and impressed me greatly. This book is so unique in its premise but so accessible to everyone that I’m amazed. May I give it more than 5 stars?
