Set at an unspecified time in a future England, this thriller combines science fiction and a murder mystery with a dire warning about the dangers of our increasing dependence on advanced technology and artificial intelligence. After the government reassures everyone about their absolute safety and mandates that all road vehicles be fully autonomous, a mysterious Hacker, or group of hackers, hijack eight carefully selected cars and send them and their occupants, all of whom have dark secrets, on a collision course guaranteed to kill them all. (As I recently rode in a new, high tech, very talkative, Model 3 Tesla, I can sympathize with the luddites who resisted the move to autonomous vehicles in this story.) All of the drama is followed in real time by millions around the world on social media. The public, via social media, get to vote to spare one of the hijacked individuals as the Hacker exposes their secrets, gleaned from their electronic trail, including government records, and conducts video interviews each of them in turn. An idealistic psychiatric nurse with a dark secrets in her past, is intimately entwined in the drama, connected to both the anonymous hacker(s) and the government body charged with investigating any accidents involving the autonomous vehicles.
But nothing is as it seems on the surface as the lies and deceptions of the hijacked individuals, the hijackers, corrupt politicians, and the investigators are gradually exposed, and then questioned. With impeccable timing, just when you think you have the plot all figured out, a totally unpredictable twist appears, usually at the very end of one of the 70 short chapters.
I usually avoid science fiction and mystery thrillers because they are too unrealistic for my taste. But most elements here are very realistic and the warning about dependence on technology and artificial intelligence needs to be heard. Readers who enjoy thrillers and murder mysteries will love this tale, and I enjoyed it too.
The Passionate Reader 