Noah Chinn reviewes: Tiger and the Robot by Grahame Shannon

It’s interesting to think about how the mystery genre has adapted over time. Think about how many changes have occurred in mystery solving between Sherlock Holmes and today. Forensics, fingerprints, DNA, facial recognition tech, and, perhaps most importantly, the internet. Yet the core of mystery storytelling is essentially the same.

I think the internet has had the biggest impact on the detective novel because of how it has changed the way we access information. Before you might have required a bunch of research to occur to learn about something or someone, now you can go online and research just about anything you need in an instant. Sherlock Holmes had Burke’s Peerage to understand who’s who in London Society. We have Google. Very little can remain hidden in the electronic age.

These advances in technology require a counterbalance to keep any sense of mystery going. If you have cellphones, you have to find ways for those phones not to work at critical times. If fingerprints and DNA exist, then a smart criminal needs to know ways around them. And if you have the internet, then you need clever ways to cover your tracks online as well.

But, here’s a question: What if the detective IS the internet?

Tiger and the Robot is a different kind of detective story, one which puts a sophisticated AI in the roll of Sherlock Holmes and its creator unwittingly becoming her Watson, though everyone is made to think he’s the real detective. I guess that makes this story the AI equivalent of Remmington Steele…