Detectives Edwin Krantz and Tara Dezner need to solve three bizarre murders that have the same modus operandi and three suspects from different walks of life. Throw a self-aware artificial intelligence into the mix and what begins as a police procedural turns into a speculative tour de force full of neuroscience and neuroscience fiction.
Eric C. Leuthardt's RedDevil 4 is set in a near-future high-tech St. Louis, when the mind has been fully mapped and digitized. At the center of the strange crimes is Dr. Hagan Maerici; his marriage may be falling apart, but his brilliance when it comes to neuroscience is unmatched. He has created an artificial intelligence from the neural patterns of human subjects and is teaching the machine--supplied with the physical avatar of a young boy--how to think like a person.
The murder suspects--a titan of industry, a gentle man on a virtual vacation and a drug dealer with dreams of the big time--all show up in Maerici's hospital laboratory exhibiting odd neural behaviors, unable to move or communicate. It's up to the detectives and the doctor to figure out why... and what, exactly, is going on.
RedDevil 4 mixes standard murder mystery tropes and a hard-edged, plausible future into a fast-paced, highly enjoyable tale filled with character, intelligence and commentary on the very nature of human consciousness. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor