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Turing Hopper #1

You’ve Got Murder

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Artificial Intelligence Personality Turing Hopper is in a panic. Her creator, Zack, has missed work for several days. After exhausting her resources, Turing is still far from giving up. For, unlike other AIPs, Turing is sentient—and she senses foul play. Her skills of deduction may be virtually flawless. But it’ll take more than that for a digital detective to catch a flesh-and-blood criminal …

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 2, 2002

11 people are currently reading
1483 people want to read

About the author

Donna Andrews

103 books2,095 followers
Donna Andrews was born in Yorktown, Virginia, the setting of Murder with Peacocks and Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos, and now lives and works in Reston, Virginia. When not writing fiction, Andrews is a self-confessed nerd, rarely found away from her computer, unless she's messing in the garden

http://us.macmillan.com/author/donnaa...

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 210 reviews
Profile Image for rivka.
906 reviews
February 25, 2020
(Reread in 2020, and it's 100% Alex's fault.)

A good book, with a fairly original concept (especially for 6+ years ago).

But somehow not as engrossing as the author's bird mysteries. I like Turing (and Tim, and Maude), but the book was too put-down-able to be a truly great mystery. ;)

Definitely good enough that I'll be reading the rest of 'em though. :D
Profile Image for Angela.
Author 6 books67 followers
December 22, 2008
First and foremost, speaking as someone who just attended at least part of a horse-related panel at an SF con and who has been conscious of how horse folks get twitchy when people use horses in a stupid fashion in fantasy novels, I'm here to tell you I feel similarly when people screw up using computers in books. This one was not particularly geeky in the level of detail it used, but for me Andrews passed the basic sanity check of using a lot of terms appropriately. Like, say, debugging or compiling something. I liked her overall schtick of a search library on the market with AIs used as research helpers--as somebody long familiar with the Microsoft Office Assistants, it seemed like a fun and plausible extension of that concept.

And I'm a sucker for "sentient AI" stories, too. This one featured Turing Hopper (whose name was another indicator that the writer has at least a basic level of clue about the computing field), the only AI in the system who is as of yet fully sentient and who has been on the sly trying to look for signs that other AIs in the system are developing along the same path. She's a very charming character, and played well for me as a consciousness who was young and relatively immature (yet learning fast) and, most importantly, not human. I was very amused by her descriptions of trying to grasp the human sense of humor, even more charmed by reading about her trying to develop her intellect by studying recipes (and amusing the hell out of the human programmers at the company with such concepts as "pomegranates in chocolate sauce with cilantro"), and especially interested in the part of the plot where Turing must arrange to have herself downloaded into a laptop.

I liked the description of how Turing spends several fretful nights during the course of the plot waiting for the humans to wake up--since she doesn't need sleep, and since her perceptions of time are based on nanoseconds instead of minutes or hours, a whole night is an eternity to her and being forced to wait that long for further action drives her nuts.

I really liked the description of how it felt to Turing to be downloaded, and her fretting over whether she would be as intelligent if she had less computing power at her disposal--and less of the data she'd been used to working with. She had a very believable quandary over what constituted her actual sentience and what constituted the data she worked with, and a very real fear that if she didn't download all the right bits of herself that she might actually kill her own intellect.

So all in all, very engaging primary character there. Her crush on her programmer was not particularly surprising either--but on the other hand, the programmer is actually on camera for very little of the story, so that concept turned out to be way less annoying than it might otherwise have been in a cozy-style mystery. What little we see of the programmer shows that he's on the "swoonable" end of "nerd", just enough to show you why Turing has a crush of him, but he's actually not terribly vital to the plot.

The other two major human characters are far more critical. There's Maude, a pragmatic, no-nonsense older secretary in the company, and Tim, another programmer who starts off not believing that Turing is in fact a sentient AI--and who thinks that she's merely an extremely reclusive programmer. They're both fun characters, and Tim's initial crush on Turing, strangely mirroring her crush on her programmer Zack, was similarly lightly handled. Just enough to get you the idea without dwelling on it too long.

One more character is worth mentioning, and he's KingFischer, who seems to be rapidly shaping up to be Turing's very own virtual love interest. He's another of the AIs in the system, and he's one of the ones showing signs of becoming sentient. He starts off as a chess-playing avatar, and is good enough that there's a craze going on out on the Internet for chess champions to hold matches moderated by him (and for which Turing contributes snarky commentary for him to then channel out to the players, a concept which made me snicker a lot). He also shows active worry when Turing starts preparing to download herself out of the system.

And at the end, KF (as Turing likes to call him) winds up being involved in a double-barrel surprise that I was genuinely not expecting out of a cozy-style mystery: not only does Andrews kill off Turing's human programmer, Zack (she in fact has him shot at point-blank range by the primary bad guy), she then has Turing hand a fretful KF the pile of data she'd hoarded about Zack due to her crush on him. And at the very end of the book, KF starts incorporating Zack's speech patterns into his own. Yeah, I know. That latter bit isn't really surprising given the former bit, but on the other hand, it too showed the same lightness of handling that kept it from being cloying or annoying. What really made it work for me is Turing's own lack of gushiness about it; she's very matter-of-fact in handing the Zack data to KingFischer, mostly because he asks her plaintively what's going on, and she gives him the whole shebang and tells him to process it all. I find myself looking forward to seeing whether in the next book KF does in fact become a hybrid of his original personality--and whether he starts more active participation in Turing's adventures. ;)

All in all the plot almost wound up being secondary to me because I liked Turing as a character so much... yet there was some genuine interest value there too. As I said above, it did pull a couple of surprises on me. There were other things that were predictable, such as Zack's allegedly-recently-deceased best friend turning out to have faked his own death because he's actually one of the bad guys. But the overall conflict was decent, with more of the general light handling.

I'll be picking up the second one of these!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Ronna.
514 reviews62 followers
October 11, 2014
This is a cute mystery for all those techno geeks out there. Turing Hopper is an AIP (Artificial Intelligence Personality) connected to the maim frame of a corporation that is creating computers to interact with people on specific interests. There are some for discussing cooking, some that play chess, some trade in the stock market, and Turing is programs with every mystery book.

She--yes she, is developing a personality and audio language--- has realized that her developer has been gone for a while and all his personnel files are slowly being removed from the records. So, Turing, like Nero Wolf, needs some hands and feet to help in her investigation. She finds two people in the organization to help her. Apparently somebody is willing to kill people to take over this company.

The inner workings of computers and robotics is the main theme of this cozy mystery, but the story is easily accessible for techno simpletons like myself. Sentient computers become very interesting the further and further that you get into this book. The mystery in exciting and makes for a fun and different kind of cozy!
Profile Image for Linda.
Author 13 books58 followers
July 2, 2017
Artificial intelligence is center-stage in this unique mystery. Loved the idea and this is one plot that requires alternating points of view and it is used effectively here. However the pace drags due to the large amount of computer-function explanation that may have been necessary back in 2002 but was a hinderance in 2017. And therein lies the problem with techno-based writing. By the time it goes to press, it is already outdated.

A friend suggested this book years ago and it finally made it to the top of my reading list. Unfortunately, I waited too long. Thanks to Siri, AI is something we take for granted and we have small but powerful computers with us all the time in our cell phones. Nevertheless, I appreciated this book for some of the best alternating points of view I've ever seen and a very likable amateur sleuth.
403 reviews1 follower
February 14, 2011
This is a totally different mystery than I have ever read before. Apparently Donna Andrews won several awards for her creativity in creating a detective/slueth inside of a computer. The premise is great...the writing is typical Donna Andrews (which I love). There were however, some slow points because of the amount of thinking the computer does which has to be explained...and the details were sometimes more than I really wanted to know! Overall I did enjoy it.
Profile Image for Brenda.
1,299 reviews6 followers
January 25, 2019
I'm not sure this book does well with the passage of time. A lot of the technology in the book is out-dated and not only computer technology. I was a little surprised that a Range Rover in the early 2000s (when this book was published) had crank windows; my 1999 Saturn had electronic windows. Since I have the second one, I might give it a read. If I didn't already have it, I'm not sure I would go seeking it.
Profile Image for Susan Ferguson.
1,086 reviews21 followers
June 8, 2022
This series has been packed away for a long time. Was delighted they came to light. Turing Hopper is an artificial intelligence personality who has become sentient. She is one of several personalities in a research network assisting people with research. Several other personalities are approaching sentience but not there yet. Then she notices that her programmer is not at work and becomes uneasy when she discovers someone searching his work area at night. In searching files for hints on what is going on with the programmer, she learns he is disappearing from the company files. Stuff he was working on is credited to others. So where is he and what has happened?
Profile Image for Sheryl.
1,890 reviews38 followers
February 2, 2023
An interesting premise… an A.I. amateur detective. I had to keep reminding myself the book was written in the early 2000s when computers and cell phones weren’t ubiquitous. The mystery was complex and interesting. Turing did spend a little too much time pondering various things. I think this could have been pared back somewhat but it was still a highly entertaining book. The audio narrations took a little while to get used to but once I did I really enjoyed it. Well done.
Profile Image for Janet.
3,341 reviews24 followers
May 12, 2019
Clever mystery featuring a computer as the heroine. I wasn't sure how I felt about it in the beginning, but as I read more, it captured my interest.
1 review
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April 8, 2022
Soi cầu xổ số 25/10/2018 giải mã giấc mơ thấy người yêu cũ

Người yêu cũ hay gọi cách khác là người từng thương, một người mà người ta từng xem là tất cả, là một nửa cuộc đời của họ, từng hạnh phúc bên nhau,…nói chung là từng yêu nhau nhưng vì một lý do nào đó khiến hai người phải tìm đến cách là chia tay để rồi từ ngày đó hai người từng yêu thương nhau giờ trở thành người yêu cũ. Nhắc tới người yêu cũ thì ai đã từng trải qua những cuộc chia tay khi nghĩ về những người yêu cũ này đều có những kỷ niệm đẹp.

Chẳng có một kỷ niệm nào gọi là xấu cả vì chúng ta đã từng yêu nhau và cho nhau những phút giây tuyệt v��i khi ở cạnh nhau, những giận hờn cãi vả để rồi chúng ta hiểu nhau hơn đôi khi chính vì giận hờn cãi vã xảy ra quá nhiều và không ai chịu nhường ai để rồi phải tìm đến con đường là chia tay. Chia tay nó như một cao dao hai lưỡi vô hình vậy nó làm tim ta đau, làm đầu ta phải đau chỉ vì những kỷ niệm đó cứ ùa về. Phải làm sao để quên đi người yêu cũ thì câu trả lời chỉ có thể là cần phải có một khoảng thời gian dài để quên đi nó.

Vậy trong giấc mơ của các bạn đã từng xuất hiện người yêu cũ chưa? Chắc chắn là từng xuất hiện rồi phải không ạ!

[​IMG] Vậy xin mời tất cả các bạn hãy cùng SXMB chúng tôi đi giải mã giấc mơ thấy người yêu cũ này.

Nhiều người cứ hỏi mơ thấy người yêu cũ có ý nghĩa gì? Hay các bạn chỉ nghĩ đó như là một sự vô tình của tạo hóa thôi. Nhưng giấc mơ đâu có đơn giản như vậy chúng còn ẩn chứa đầy bí ẩn ở đằng sau mà ta chưa kịp vén chúng lên. Chính những giấc mơ này sẽ giúp đỡ trở thành một con người hoàn thiện hơn. Vậy mơ thấy người yêu cũ có ý nghĩa như nào? Chúng là điềm báo gì? Thì hãy dựa vào các bối cảnh của giấc mơ thì ta mới có thể đưa ra kết luận. Không để các bạn phải tò mò các chuyên gia phân tích giấc mơ đã đưa ra cho các bạn một số những lý giải đơn giản để các bạn tham khảo.

[​IMG]
Giải mã giấc mơ thấy người yêu cũ

Nằm mơ thấy quay lại với người yêu cũ, giấc mơ này cho thấy bạn vẫn đang chìm đắm trong những kỷ niệm xưa của mối tình cũ. Nếu như vậy thì bạn sẽ bị xuống tinh thần trong nhiều cái, như học tập, công việc…làm cái gì bạn cũng nghĩ tới chuyện cũ rồi sau đó nó chi phối não bộ của bạn khiến bạn không còn hứng thú để làm bất cứ thứ gì nữa thậm chí bạn còn buồn hơn.

Mơ thấy quay lại với tình cũ đây chắc là một trường hợp hi hữu vì đa số một khi đã chia tay thì không quay lại chỉ vì trước đó người ấy đã làm mình đau rồi thế nên chẳng rại gì mà quay lại lần hai. Khi đó bạn cảm thấy cái quay lại như một sự ép buộc và tình cảm cũng chẳng như xưa nữa. Thế nên giấc mơ này muốn bạn biết bạn đang bị chi phối bởi những suy nghĩ tiêu cực của ngày xưa mà quên mất đi cuộc sống hiện tại của bạn đang cần gì bạn cần thay đổi bản thâ n để quên đi những thứ cũ kĩ để có thể sống một cuộc sống bình thường không buồn phiền, không bon chen nữa.

[​IMG] Theo XSMB thu 3 - XSMB th3 - Ket qua xo so Mien Bac hom nay thu 3 hang tuan nằm mơ người yêu cũ lấy chồng hoặc vợ, giấc mơ này cho thấy bạn đang rất vui, hạnh phúc. Vì đa số khi ai chia tay người yêu thì họ đều mong những người yêu cũ đó sẽ tìm được người khác tốt hơn để khiến họ hạnh phúc. Nếu một trong hai người phải chứng kiến cảnh kết hôn đó thì chắc hẳn hai người đều cảm thấy rất vui và an tâm khi không có mình thì người ta vẫn tìm được người tốt hơn.

Trước kia yêu nhau là một chuyện nhưng liệu có thể làm nhau hạnh phúc được không thì hoàn toàn khó biết trước được. Điều này cũng cho thấy cuộc sống của bạn đang rất yên bình mọi thứ đều diễn ra ổn thỏa không có những suy nghĩ vu vơ nào khiến bạn nản bước với cuộc sống này. Hãy cứ như thế cuộc sống của bạn sẽ càng ngày tốt hơn thôi.

Để tìm hiểu giấc mơ này rõ hơn bạn có thể vào đây LINK để các chuyên gia phân tích giấc mơ của chúng mình sẽ giúp bạn hiểu rõ hơn về ý nghĩa của nó nhé.

[​IMG]
Soi cầu xổ số 25/10/2018

[​IMG] Theo KQXSMB người yêu cũ một loại người tuy từng khiến ta phải chịu đau khổ về mặt tinh thần nhưng họ luôn đáng được tôn trọng vì họ cũng là người từng đem niềm vui, hạnh phúc, những sự sẻ chia, sư ấm áp, quan tâm đến với ta.

Vậy mỗi giấc mơ thấy người yêu cũ cũng như vậy chúng đều muốn tốt cho bạn chúng muốn giúp bạn muốn thấy bạn thấy cái gì đó ở tương lai hay hiện tại đang xảy ra với bạn để bạn có thể kịp phản ứng với chúng. Hãy tôn trọng những giấc mơ như vậy. Ngoài ra những giấc mơ này còn có mối quan hệ với những con số may mắn có thể thay đổi cả cuộc đời của bạn .

Mơ thấy người yêu cũ tâm sự với mình là số : 11-54

Mơ thấy người yêu cũ lấy chồng hoặc vợ là số : 00-12

Mơ thấy người yêu cũ quay lại với mình là số : 43-23

Đừng bỏ qua những giấc mơ hãy ghi nhớ chúng để bạn có thể tìm ra con số may mắn dành cho bạn nhé. Để xem kết quả xổ số ngày hôm nay bạn có thể vào đây LINK để xem kết quả đúng và nhanh nhất nhé.

Xem thêm:  XSMT
Profile Image for Shelley Pearson.
Author 1 book33 followers
December 4, 2020
I thought this was a pretty interesting concept - a sentient A.I. detective - and I liked Turing's personality and how she was trying to become more human. I thought it was a decent mystery. I was confused about when it was written, because I think the audiobook only recently came out, but the characters were soooo not computer savvy, it seemed . . . odd. And there were comments like only nerds are really into computers or even have home computers, which I thought was kind of rude, since aren't people who are into computers sort of the target audience? It just felt immediately outdated. And I thought Maude and Tim worked at the same company as Zack, who developed the sentient A.I., so why were they so unfamiliar with computers? Wasn't it a tech company? I guess I missed exactly what kind of business they all worked for. Tim's makeover scene kind of annoyed me too:

However, I am planning on reading the next book in the series, and I kind of like it just for being such a weird concept.
Profile Image for Graceann.
1,167 reviews
July 24, 2014
Donna Andrews was challenged to come up with a completely new sleuth in the mystery genre, and in this she succeeds admirably. She has crafted a detective who has vast, basically limitless knowledge, paired with physical limitation that requires her to bring in "legs" to help her.

Turing Hopper is worried about her co-worker, Zack. He's gone missing and the evidence that he ever existed is beginning to disappear, bit by bit. Along with her cohorts, Maude and Tim, Turing sets out to find Zack and to uncover what made him go away in the first place.

Donna Andrews is bright and breezy and she writes in a fun, witty style. I'm already a big fan of her Meg Langslow series and certainly was intrigued by this first book for Turing Hopper.

For me, however, the language got much too "techy" at too many different places. If you're deeply conversant with computers, you could have lots of fun with this, either by thinking how clever it is or picking apart the mistakes (if there are any). For a person like me, who has knowledge limited to "what do you mean you 'can't see the printer?!' It's right there!!" the information provided simply sails over my head. This made some sections dry as a bone because I simply didn't know what the heck was going on.

Even so, I loved Turing, and Tim, and most especially Maude, who starts off amusingly and gets even more nifty as the story develops. I'll be reading more of the series if only to see what happens next with her.

Even three star Donna Andrews is better than a lot of stuff I could be reading, and I'll be happy to give book two in the series a try.
Profile Image for Chaitra.
4,492 reviews
August 21, 2012
I did not like it as much as I had hoped. I'll probably still read the next books, but disappointed for now. Turing's fine. The AIP was believable in the beginning, not so much in the second act. She made some silly decisions for an advanced AI. Andrews went really odd by getting Turing to download (?) into a robot which somehow diminished the original Turing in the mainframe? Why wouldn't she clone herself (she even says she did, but not really)? I think Andrews just did not want to write parallel accounts. Or she didn't want confuse readers. Or she wanted her creation to go through some existential crisis. That being said - I'm not sure I like what happened in the end. I thought Turing spent most of the book being wary about the UL's ability to fudge data. Which is exactly what she does at the end. Would Andrews have given Turing this pass had she been a human protagonist? Somehow I think not.
Profile Image for This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For.
Author 9 books74 followers
December 9, 2008
This is a cute mystery story where the protagonist detective happens to be an artificial intelligence...not a cold AI like Hal (from 2001), but rather a full more-or-less human personality which happens to be embedded in a computer system rather than a body.

The book is a light enjoyable read for those who like mysteries and won't get caught up in issues of whether a system such as the one not-really-described in the book could exist in the present day. In some books its easy to throw realism aside and enjoy them for what they are, in others its easy to get irritated over little mistakes that subtract from the realism. I'm not sure what causes a book to fall in one or the other, but this book definitely fell in the first category.
Profile Image for Anastasia.
2,259 reviews102 followers
June 8, 2022
You've Got Murder by Donna Andrews is the first book in the Turing Hopper Mystery series. Artificial Intelligence Personality Turing Hopper becomes concerned when her creator Zack goes missing and enlists the help of her human friends, Maude and Tim to find him. An interesting story with a unique character in Turing and her A.I.P. friends. Rather unbelievable and very technical in parts, I'm not sure how I feel about the book. I enjoyed it overall but the main main focus was on Turing who after all is only a computer program, although she comes across as smart and engaging with human like thoughts. Even though the story seemed rather far-fetched, it was entertaining although I felt a bit let down by the ending.
Profile Image for Mark Baker.
2,394 reviews204 followers
March 12, 2014
Turing Hopper is the first sentient Artificial Intelligence Personality. The only person who knows the truth is her creator, but when he goes missing, Turing does what she can to track him down, pulling in two additional humans to be her legs.

The creativity in this book is wonderful. Turing is such a human character you can't help but love her, and the author makes great use of the characters to tell an unique story. Definitely worth tracking down.

Read my full review at Carstairs Considers.
44 reviews
June 18, 2014
Slow reading at first as it is only the AIP (artificial intelligence program) that talks in the very first pages. But you will want to continue turning the pages to solve the mystery of David's murder (was he really murdered?) and find where Zack the programmer went in hiding to avoid being killed by the security people who want to take over the company and destroy the AIPs.

I finally finished this book after skipping a lot of pages full of details. Worth reading ? If you enjoy programming you will probably enjoy all the details found in this book and you have to like Turing the AIP who manages to play detective with a few trusted employees of his firm to avoid his destruction.
Profile Image for Diane ~Firefly~.
2,201 reviews86 followers
March 12, 2011
First time I've ever read a mystery book with an AI program as the protagonist. Definitely and new and interesting POV. Unfortunately, this led to my biggest problem with the book, Turning didn't have anyone to talk to, so she went into long, rambling monologues.

What I enjoyed:
* Seeing Turning grow.
* Poor Maude's interactions with her boss.
* I was surprised by some of the things that happened at the end, even if I didn't like them all.

What could have been better:
* Turning needed an AI sidekick to talk to.
* The mystery part was solved fairly quickly.
Profile Image for Dawn-Lorraine.
599 reviews10 followers
March 9, 2019
I don't mind cozy mysteries - they're formulaic, you know what to expect, there's always a happy ending and they're quick reads - but the premise for this one is easily dated. Having AI as the protagonist solving a crime is unique for a mystery series (obviously not so much with sci-fi novels). But there is a lot of then-current tech used throughout the plot and, because the novel came out more than 15 years ago, it's difficult to not be distracted by how slow things progress. Using 2019 tech with the same plot would turn this into a novella! Sometimes, books just don't age well.
Profile Image for Lisa Vegan.
2,913 reviews1,316 followers
June 5, 2007
This is a very unique (the main protagonist is a computer/computer program) and funny and clever mystery. Love this series. This first book in the series was the one that I enjoyed the most, probably because the concept was then new to me and was so unusual. It well worth reading if you're a mystery or computer buff. Great fun!
Profile Image for Ruth.
1,046 reviews
May 30, 2009
2002 Agatha Award for best Novel. I enjoyed it but was not blown away. 'novel' concept. A bit abrupt in places.
Profile Image for Kevin.
1,990 reviews34 followers
November 10, 2011
Nice first novel in a series about an AI who's out to save her creator, herself and a few friends she's made along the away
Profile Image for Tristan Wolf.
Author 10 books28 followers
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August 4, 2020
A wise professor of literature once said, "Give a novel 50 pages. If you're still not hooked, set it aside. Either it's not for you, or perhaps it's not for you right now. Either way, move on, and return if you want to revisit it." This book did not pass that test.

My complaint about this book is that the characters are inversely stereotypical, to wit: Women are inherently better than men, so women are portrayed either as terrific (e.g., the artificial intelligence called Turing Hopper or her human assistant Maude) or utterly worthless (e.g., Gini, the former girlfriend of the missing programmer Zack). Men are portrayed as severely flawed (e.g., Zack, whose overall worth is severely diminished in Maude's mind for having chosen a "ditz" for a girlfriend) or stupidly predatory (e.g., Tim, who is convinced that Turing is a real person, hiding from him by claiming she's only "in the computer" -- behavior which Maude dismisses with a sneering expletive of "Men" [p.43]).

I could not get past Turing's chirpy attitude, if only because I can't understand how the AI is represented as achieving not merely sentience (bordering upon sapience) but an attitude and presentment that embodies so many of the negative traits that "male chauvinist pigs" claim belong to women, from duplicity to coquettish manipulation. I have examined myself for misogyny and, although I have all too many memories of events in my life that would lead any rational being to lean toward that trait, I find that my initial statement holds true: This work consists of inverse stereotypes, and I cannot find any work solely based upon stereotypes of any kind to be interesting. (It's why I have rarely found a gay male romance novel that holds my interest; most are no better than their heterosexual counterparts.)

I have a VG+ first edition, autographed by the author and inscribed "To Ernest, hope you enjoy meeting Turing," followed by a handwritten link to her website. Perhaps it's important that I'm not Ernest (c'mon, could you have resisted the pun?), but if anyone wants this copy, I'm glad to offer it. I'm going back to Hammett, Stout, Block, Hoch, and Hansen.
Profile Image for Megan.
617 reviews7 followers
December 23, 2021
Somewhere between a two and a half and a three for me. Once I realized this book came out in 2001 (I listened to a much more recent audiobook recording and only saw that publication date), the tired tropes, stereotypes, and even the misogyny (WHY does everyone hate Ginny? Is there ever a single reason given? And no, dots her i's with hearts is not a reason) bothered me a little less, and I was much more impressed with what the author got right about the ways AI could evolve and be used.

Of the three viewpoint character, Maude was the only one I unreservedly liked. If the entire book had been written from her point of view, it might have been much better. Turing toggled between spending paragraphs upon paragraphs trying to analyze her own personhood and all the ways she was "other" because she was an AIP and then whenever she wasn't doing that, sounding exactly like a human, including having the same exact emotional and even quasi-physical responses to things. The author would simply change up some trite phrase like "my head was spinning" to "my processors were whirling" or "My eyes went big" to "I widened my input receivers." I couldn't stand a single male character in the entire book, and boy were there a lot of them.

In addition to not being terribly well written, this book is not really a murder mystery. Yes, there is at least one murder somewhere in the story (trying to keep this review spoiler-free), and yes, the characters try to figure out some things related to a potential murder, but it's really a lightly sci-filler corporate thriller, which isn't really a genre I have much interest in to begin with.

It made a bit of change from all the Christmas stories, but that's as much as I can say for it.
538 reviews4 followers
January 3, 2025
Book #: 1
Title: You've Got Murder
Author: Donna Andrews
Series: Turing Hopper #1
Format: 298 pages, Hardcover, own
Pub Date: First published April 2, 2002
Started: 1/1/25 Finished: 1/3/25
Awards: Dilys Award Nominee (2003), Agatha Award for Best Novel (2002)
Categories:
PS10 A book you got for free (Christmas present!); PS42 A book with a title that starts with the letter Y; GR32 A mystery or true crime book; GR36 A book with a common household object on the cover (computer mouse); GR45 A book by an author whose publishing career spans at least ten years; GR2023 A book whose author has published more than 7 books; GR2024 A book that has been on your TBR for over a year;
Goodreads Rating: 3.66; 2,002 ratings; 200 reviews
My Rating: ***** five out of five stars

Zach Malone, a brilliant workaholic programmer who specializes in AI programs has gone missing. Turing Hopper is concerned and starts inquiries into his disappearance. She uncovers a plot to takeover the company he works for, she suspects he may have been killed. Did I mention that Turing is one of the AI programs that Zach designed?

I love Donna Andrews, I've read her entire Meg Langslow series, all 36 books. The local library only had one Turing Hopper novel, so my wife bought me the entire set for Christmas. :D

Profile Image for Jessica Sloane.
76 reviews1 follower
March 25, 2024
I'd probably rate this 3.5 stars. It wasn't unputdownable, but it was definitely interesting and fairly unique. This book centers on a sentient AIP (Artificial Intelligence Personality) named Turing Hopper. She has a hard time convincing even her creator that she is sentient, and in one case, a hard time convincing someone she's not human. She becomes worried when her creator doesn't show up for a week and enlists the help of two of her human friends to help her find them. Things spiral from there as they realize it's a lot more complex than a missing persons case.

I liked the characters, especially another AIP named KingFisher. He is a chess AIP that Turing suspects is becoming sentient. There were many technical parts in the book that were written to be easy enough to follow, if not a little boring in some cases. But a lot of it was interesting too, especially seeing how the different AIPs interacted with one another. While it's probably not a book I would re-read, it's definitely a series I will finish.
Profile Image for Linda.
1,012 reviews13 followers
October 21, 2024
It's light sf mystery about a sentient AI named Turing Hopper who likes to amuse herself by giving humans the Turing test (and failing them.) Turing is just learning to have "emotions" but isn't sure she understands them. When Zach, the software engineer who Turing "loves", goes missing, Turing uses all the knowledge gained from the thousands of mystery novels in her database to find him and help him. She finds two human friends and assistants in Maude, a middle aged secretary, and Tim, another software engineer, both of whom worked with Zach. The first half of the book was rather slow as it consisted of Turing learning how to navigate in the real world through directing the actions of her friends, but the second half got a lot more interesting and darker as they moved closer to solving Zach's disappearance. This is the first book in a 4 book series and I liked Turing and her friends enough that i plant to read on!
Profile Image for Kyrie.
3,478 reviews
January 8, 2019
Pretty good blend of mystery and geek. Turing Hopper is a sentient computer, and her beloved programmer has gone missing. While she tries to figure out what has happened to him, she uncovers more sinister plots within the company for which she works.
It's a very different heroine than the usual mystery. There's a fair amount of geekiness, and it's kinda entertaining because it was written when laptops and cell phones were less common. It's also got "what makes something human" musing laced throughout. What I really liked was that the computers weren't condescending to humans. They were trying to understand and emulate us because they liked it.
The ending left me a little confused, but then I'm taking cold meds, so it might make sense when I reread it.
It's not Meg Langdon, more like the technogeeks who work for Meg's brother Rob.
997 reviews5 followers
January 12, 2018
I have read many of Donna Andrews books from another series so I decided to try this on. A computer is the main character. A computer with an Artificial Intelligence Personality, AIP. "She" was created by Zack and she noticed that he is missing. "She" , Turing enlists the help of humans, Maude and Tim, to help her find Zack. "She" also gets other AIP computers to help. The story is quite good and there are some twists that surprised me. I really am not excited about how much personality computers might have, but it was fun to see how the mystery was solved............human help WAS needed!
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