Book Review: Driven

Title: Driven

Author: Dane Cobain

Date: 2017

Quote: "The black sedan had skidded off course and was heading towards the pavement."

That would be the pavement reserved for pedestrians at the sides of the asphalt London road. Is the black sedan driven by a drunk? By someone who wants to murder an aging actress? Is it, in fact, driven at all?

Dane Cobain considers the possibility that a "self-driving" car could be reprogrammed and moved without a human behind the wheel. It's happened--sometimes by accident--by now. It happens, in this novel, when the black sedan knocks down and kills the actress.

Private inspector Leipfold and a millennial goth-geek girl called Maile, who wants a job badly enough to work for food until she's proved her computer skills, will end up with a conference room full of people who have some connection with the "accident." Cobain admits that the baddies are caricatures, but tries to make sympathetic characters like Leipfold, Maile, the police officers with whom they work, and the innocent people drawn into the complicated plot, as "normal" as he can. Meh. Maile remnds me more than slightly of Agent Clarice Starling, but didn't everybody want to adopt Starling too?

This complicated mystery will keep you guessing...especially when you remember that, with experimental new technology, there's always the possibility that major damage can be done by minor errors. For people who like a long elaborate puzzle to solve, this should be the kind of story they like.