Wakeless

Joe Sault #1

by William M. Dean

Wakeless is a realistic police procedural fused with straight-up sci-fi action/adventure—Michael Connelly meets Isaac Asimov.

The near future...
You can choose your reality—virtual, augmented, or holographic—and artificially intelligent virtual assistants within humanoid shells have recently become available to the average consumer.

Constable Joseph Sault is out of touch with his children, possibly losing his wife to another man and his father to dementia, and constantly in trouble with his superiors. Feeling isolated and powerless, he finds solace only in his work. It’s a shaky balance that probably isn’t really working.

For Sault, more trouble begins with a simple question about an apparent traffic accident: How could a small, autonomous car on a barren stretch of road sustain so much damage? Answers prove elusive, questions keep piling up, and he soon finds himself in the middle of what might be a conspiracy with world-shaking implications.

Then, when the prime suspect turns out to be his wife’s employer, his work and personal life collide.

Cornered and out of options, Sault is forced to risk everything in a desperate bid to outwit the man who has the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence at his command.

277 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 3, 2019

About the author

I had my first book "published" in grade 4.
Mrs. Holdridge assigned the whole class to illustrate it and she bound it with staples. It was widely distributed...to our parents.
That's when I decided I wanted to become a writer.
That's how influential a single teacher can be.
After that, I wrote many stories that I hope never see the light of day.
I was drawn to the cleverness and technical twists in science fiction (Ben Bova, Aldus Huxley, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke--those were the icons of my early years), but always felt they lacked realism.
Then I read The Stand, by Stephen King, and it shook my world. This was fiction that felt real to the core.
And that's what I then aspired to write.
My prose got all high-fallutin for a long while, and then I read Michael Connelly's Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer series' and learned that heroes could be harsh and language was best when simple and straight forward.
Then came indie publishing.
And, here I am.
If you like realistically drawn worlds and characters, try one of my fiction books.

Reviews

[Sami · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would not have really classified this as a mystery. There was an mystery plot in the background of the book, and lead Sault to do things, but it didn't get exciting until the last 25% of the book. Given this is to be the first of a series, there was a lot of background building of the world and characters which was necessary for a series opener but took away from the mystery part of the book.

MAIN CHARACTER: I think what bothered me a lot was the relationship Sault has with his wife and family. He realizes he is very distant and knows nothing about their lives because he is a beat cop and works long hours, plus the way technology has become an integral part in every person's life plays a bit of a role. It was hard to read these sections of the book because he notices the issue but doesn't exactly try to make it better. This also means he's an angry man who doesn't know how to share his feelings and emotions even when he is required to go to a therapist! If you want to read a book about an angry white man who doesn't know how to deal with his feelings or try to fix his broke marriage because he is complacent (and enjoys looking at other women and thinking about cheating on his wife with them) while he tries to solve a mystery that his AI pretty much solves for him when he starts using her to help him . If you are okay with all of that and are really just here for the mystery well you might be a little disappointed depending on how you like your mysteries to play out.

MYSTERY: So this woman died in a self driving car accident in the middle of no where. She wasn't wearing a watch (everyone wears a watch. think of it like your phone but holographic and its more like a computer on your wrist with an AI built in, if you have an AI. so seeing someone without one is liking finding a person dead and they don't have a phone on them). She had drugs on her and a cop at the crime scene died because he touched the drugs and it killed him. So there are two mysteries in this book, but once you start reading it, it's pretty obvious the cop just died because he was stupid. Either didn't handle the drugs properly at the crime scene or took them home for recreational use and then died because the drugs were laced. Of course Sault has to investigate the entire thing because he wouldn't be satisfying his need to know *eye roll*. (Vivia could have figured this out for you honey.) So we have to go down the rabbit hole of investigating the cop that had some money issues for an unmemorable reason and so he stopped buying Jingo cause he couldn't afford it so he stole some from a crime scene. Cool. We could have guessed that, so Sault why wouldn't you focus your time on the girl who died first cause obviously her dying caused this cop to die - meaning WAY more important. Of course the drug is a clue but again we don't get to that making sense until like the last maybe 30% of the book.
Okay so back to the girl who died. She was WAY more interesting. So she's not really in the system and they can't ID her, weird because everyone should be in the system. I enjoyed the conversations Sault had with other programmers, they were interesting and added to the mystery and plot. Having finished this a couple days ago and sat on it, I feel differently than when I first finished it. Initially I was disappointed because the entire point of this was so another (presumably white) male with money wanted power, and found a way to try and get there. Given his road to success is a very interesting one with murders and blackmail, so I'll give him that. But he kind of sat on his ass for most of it and let the AI do all the work for him. But now thinking about it, the bigger picture of how an AI can control and make little tweaks to get you to a certain outcome is very interesting. I only realized this when watching the most recent episode of West World S3E5 where it explains that everyone's fate is determined and manipulated to stay on a certain course so there is no chaos in the world. In both of these storylines and AI can be used to make the world the way you want it, whether to benefit you (Wakeless) or the "greater good" (West World). It's just sad that comparing them now, Wakeless seems kind of lame because it couldn't think bigger in bringing about more than a man wanting all the power in the world, and the only way to get there is to kill people. Whereas West World is bringing peace by controlling everyone's life. Food for thought.

RECOMMENDATION: If you can see past Sault's character flaws and the very detailed descriptions of all the women (real and robot) in the book, as well as the pointless rabbit hole cop mystery. The main one is good, it just takes a lot of work to read through all the other stuff to get to the good stuff. It's a book you really have to work for because when the chapters end, there are no cliff hangers, no real reason to want to read the next chapter. There is no suspense or thrill to stay up late and keep reading besides your own curiosity to want to know how it plays out.

[Csimplot Simplot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book!!!

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read.