4th in the Turing Hopper series.
Tim Pincoski is a young private eye in suburban Washington, DC, whose new client wants him to investigate her grandson's business. Eddie is in the hospital, the victim of a hit-and-run driver, and Grandma thinks it has to do with his work.
Eddie's company -- a small, not terribly organized enterprise -- hosts web space and designs web pages for several small businesses, which means that Tim's friends Maude and Turing are going to be of great assistance. Maude works at Universal Library, a consulting firm that has designed several AIP programs -- that's Artificial Intelligence Personality -- that are experts in various areas; Turing is one of those AIPs, an intellectual jack-of-all-trades, and fully sentient (though only Tim and Maude know this).
The marvel of Andrews' series is that she continues to find ways to keep Turing involved in the action despite her obvious lack of mobility; amazing what a highspeed Internet connection and a few strategically placed webcams will do.
There is also an ongoing background story in the series, involving the theft (Turing would prefer the word "kidnapping") of T2, a copy of Turing's program, also sentient. The thief is apparently trying to rewrite T2's program to keep the smarts but lose the sentience; a mind like Turing's, after all, would be of great benefit to a criminal, were it not for that annoying conscience. Andrews stretches a bit hard at the end of this book to tie that background story into her main plot; it's time, I think, to devote a book to resolving the T2 story.
Lightweight stuff, but written with great charm and always entertaining.
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