The Automatic Detective<\/i> is a strange but funny blend of hard-boiled detective story and retro sci fi.\n<\/p>\n
\nMack Megaton is a robot. Originally built for destruction , he has gained free will, given up his violent ways, and now earns a living as a taxi driver. In a city bustling with mutants and sentient robots (many of whom are even full citizens), he actually sort of almost blends in, even though he is huge, red, and almost indestructible.\n<\/p>\n
\nOne day his human neighbours are kidnapped. Mack gets mad. (He has issues with anger management.) He gets no real help from the police, so he decides to track them down and rescue them himself.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe rest of the book is full of what would be standard for a detective novel but comes across as funny in this setting. Confrontations with mob bosses, intimidating their underlings, exchanging macho but witty comments with sassy blonde girl, gunfights and sneaking around.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Automatic Detective<\/i> feels sort of like a what-if game by the author – “let’s see if I can make this work”. Since it is founded on a cliché, it feels worn at times, but the mixture as a whole is nevertheless distinctive enough to stand above cliché. Not an unforgettable work of great literature, but good light-hearted fun all the way through.\n<\/p>\n
\nAmazon US<\/a>, Amazon UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Automatic Detective is a strange but funny blend of hard-boiled detective story and retro sci fi. Mack Megaton is a robot. Originally built for destruction , he has gained free will, given up his violent ways, and now earns a living as a taxi driver. In a city bustling with mutants and sentient robots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[99,77,80,81],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-a_lee_martinez","tag-book_review","tag-fiction","tag-sff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}