Book Review: Made to Kill by Adam Christopher

 

Adam Christopher's Made to Kill is billed as Robotic Noir. Sign me up, please. 

"Raymond Electromatic is good at his job, as good as he ever was at being a true Private Investigator, the lone employee of the Electromatic Detective Agency--except for Ada, office gal and super-computer, the constant voice in Ray's inner ear. Ray might have taken up a new line of work, but money is money, after all, and he was programmed to make a profit. Besides, with his twenty-four-hour memory-tape limits, he sure can keep a secret.

When a familiar-looking woman arrives at the agency wanting to hire Ray to find a missing movie star, he's inclined to tell her to take a hike. But she had the cold hard cash, a demand for total anonymity, and tendency to vanish on her own.

Plunged into a glittering world of fame, fortune, and secrecy, Ray uncovers a sinister plot that goes much deeper than the silver screen--and this robot is at the wrong place, at the wrong time."

A robotic gum shoe, a private eye, who stands out like a sore thumb, which makes you wonder how he managed to get anything done. However much people gave him the side eye when he was out and about, he was largely ignored. Perhaps because Ray couldn't remember anything for more than 24 hours, there was probably a good bit of history we didn't know about since it was entirely from his point of view. The attempt to make it seem like a good old fashioned detective story, think Sam Spade or Mike Hammer, with the small office, creaky chairs, and smoking secretary and all the aesthetics that go with a private eye, all courtesy of ADA the computer's sound affects was more a distraction than anything else. Good concept and once I made it past the first chapter which had issues with punctuation and made it difficult to read, the story smoothed out. Even with the many implausibility's within the story, it was an interesting story.

Alphabet by Author, Dusty book, Science Fiction, 1965 California, 234