Just Finished Reading: By the Pricking of Her Thumb by Adam Roberts (FP: 2018) [260pp] 

It was, without much doubt, Alma’s strangest case. It was no wonder that the police had requested her services as an official advisor (the plus being that she was going to get paid even if at the basic rate). The only certain thing they could all agree on was that the victim was dead. The question was: How? The only ‘weapon’ used was a needle pushed, deliberately, through the victim's thumb. No toxins were discovered in her system, no trauma, nothing. So, what killed her exactly? Reluctantly, Alma agreed to take the case and, with her partner, started looking into possibilities... But lightening does indeed strike twice. Before Alma had more than viewed the body another even stranger case arrived and this one could pay very well indeed. One of the four richest people on the planet – from a group inevitably known to all as the ‘Fab Four’ - wanted Alma to investigate the death of one of the Four. The problem was that it was uncertain exactly who had died or how... Or when. The ‘Four’ had developed an online Gestalt and it was ‘off’ in some way. Something had changed in a hard to pin down fashion. Alma would certainly have her work cut out for her. The rich, never mind the hyper-rich represented by the Four, where not known for their willingness to open up to the police, never mind a private investigator drowning in debt.  

This was the sequel to ‘The Real-Town Murders’ that I greatly enjoyed back in September of 2023. I am a fan of well mashed genres and Sci-Fi/Crime is certainly one of them that I (generally) enjoy a great deal. Where forensic science is making crime more problematic and solving crimes arguably easier (and quicker) imagine a future with clones to mess up your DNA analysis, imagine trying to commit the perfect murder when the police have access to Time Travel.... But neither of those scenarios apply here... It’s the near(ish) future and the vast majority of people live most of their lives ‘online’ in The Shine where everything is possible – imagine a cross between the Matrix and the OASIS from Ready Player One. The ‘problem’ for the super-rich is how to make money from an existence where almost everyone can have almost everything they want for FREE. Money becomes meaningless in such a reality – unless... The Four have a variety of competing plans to monetise The Shine and if one of them is dead is that a move from one (or the rest) of the Four? How is the desire for and the move towards ‘absolute wealth’ going to play out in both the virtual and the real world. It's certainly enough to kill for, but who’s doing the killing? 

One of the great things I SO enjoy about this author is that he looks at things we’re getting used to – like Artificial Intelligence or Virtual Environments – in unique ways. He is, I think, quite the philosopher and has made me pause and really THINK about what he says more than once. I’m still mulling over one of his AI observations from his last book and consider it to be one of the most brilliant observations on the subject I’ve heard so far. Likewise, this novel is, above all else about Money, Wealth and Debt as PHILOSOPHICAL ideas (money after all hasn’t been ‘real’ for a very long time). It asks questions as fundamental as ‘What IS money’, ‘How Exactly do you Define Rich or Wealth’, ‘Is it possible – even theoretically – to be Absolutely Wealthy’, ‘What is Debt, and can it coexist in a world where “money” is more philosophical than ‘real’ and finally ‘Does money exist, indeed can it exist, in a post-scarcity world’? If you like to muse over such things and see just how DEEP the ribbit-hole goes then I think you’ll enjoy this novel. I did find it a little slow in places (quite a bit of conversations – interesting, but still) and a little self-indulgent in others (a slightly too long homage to the movie 2001) but I forgave the author these few missteps (in my mind anyway) because of the quality of the vast majority of the book. I’ve only come across this author comparatively recently but intend to read everything he’s produced. Definitely recommended for anyone looking for cerebral Science Fiction.