Blurb
After Jake shoots and kills a murder suspect who turns out to be the son of a powerful city councilman, he finds himself demoted to the Artificial Crimes Unit, tracking down androids hacked and programmed to be hit men.
When
his case of an “extra-judicial” divorce settlement takes a nasty
turn with DNA from a hundred-year-old murder in Boston and a
signature that harkens back to the very first serial killer ever in
London, Jake finds himself tangled up in the brutal slayings of
prostitutes being investigated by his former Robbery/Homicide
partner, Maddie–who is now his lover.
But
a madman, The Baron, is just getting started with his AI recreations
of Jack the Ripper's brutal crimes. And Maddie and Jake are teamed
up again to stop the carnage as the Baron's army of human replicants
imitate history's most notorious serial killers.
"It
might not make sense, but the beloved Media tags it 'Murder by
Munchausen.' For a price, there are hackers out there who will
reprogram a synthoid to do your dirty work. The bad news: no
fingerprints or DNA left at the crime scene. The good news—at least
for us—is that they’re like missiles: once they hit their target,
they’re usually as harmless as empty brass. The trick is to get
them before they melt down their core OS data, so you can get the
unit into forensics for analysis and, hopefully, an arrest."
[excerpt from Murder by Munchausen]
Artificial
Intelligence? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Artificial
Evil has a name…Munchausen.
Excerpt
From
The Invisible Mind (Book #3)
It
sat on a bench outside the dormitory of nursing students, waiting
with its kind’s infinite patience. Originally acquired and
programmed for landscaping at the Cleveland Clinic, the synthoid was
one of a brigade of units which had been hacked and Munchausened,
then returned to their menial daily services to mankind to await the
Baron’s call.
There
was no adrenalin surge behind the extremely life-like facade of
humanity when that call came. Data packets, sent scatter-shot through
the Atlas Grid, coalesced at the location outside the Cole Eye
Institute, where it methodically trimmed and shaped the immaculate
shrubbery around the building. To avoid Q’s metadata sniffing
algorithms from detecting a download spike in the grid, the
information came in digital sprinkles over the course of its human
handler’s work shift, slowly building a malevolent intent to be
executed that night. In the middle of the afternoon, it left the
topiary unfinished to melt into the hospital shift change and
disappeared.
Personality
modules were a Gen-3 feature upgrade, which is why the earlier models
were initially preferred. Swapping out a few IC chips and uploading
hacked firmware was a relatively easy way to turn a quick buck with
an automated contract killing. But evil innovates, too, and the same
features that made synthoids even more human-like in their behavior
also helped create robotic assassins which could better camouflage
their malicious intents and evade the reach of the Artificial Crimes
Unit by melting into and moving undetected through the humanity that
surrounded them. For the Baron, it allowed for a greater measure of
artistic expression in programming the synthoid’s behavior to not
only recreate infamous crimes of the past, but to mimic the behavior
of their perpetrators, which intensified the thrill of watching the
video feed through the eyes of Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy or, this
particular evening, Richard Speck. Jake wasn’t the only history
buff and it amused Jamal that London police had photographed the eyes
of Jack the Ripper’s victims, hoping to capture the last thing they
ever saw: their killer’s face. If only Scotland Yard could have
imagined the future.
The
Gen-3 personality modules also supported the ANSI Adaptive Artificial
Intelligence Protocol #9 to enhance the artificial human experience
of real men and women who interacted with synthoids. The constant
writing and rewriting of code in the personality/experience loop
formed unique individual synthoid consciousnesses, which
manufacturers uploaded to their servers for product improvement teams
to study. In Munchausened units, that feed was hijacked and routed
to another portal in the Darknet to build a collective id of evil.
At
eleven PM, it rose from the bench and entered the dormitory. The
bodies of nine women would be found the next day, having been
strangled and stabbed to death. Unlike 1966, no eyewitness was left
alive, though the phrase "Born to Raise Hell" was written
on the wall in blood.
About
the Author
M.T.
Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion that
while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right
reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls,
USA.
Born
in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He
graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and
Philosophy, then worked in the private sector (where they expect
“results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing
market. During those years, Bass continued to write fiction. He is
the author of eight novels: My Brother’s Keeper, Crossroads,
In the Black, Somethin’ for Nothin’, Murder by
Munchausen, The Darknet (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #2),
The Invisible Mind (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #3) and
Article 15. His writing spans various genres, including
Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A
Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and
pilots are featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on
the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio.
M.T.
Bass Author Links
Website:
https://www.mtbass.net
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/owlworks/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Owlworks
Amazon
Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/mtbass
Murder
by Munchausen Trilogy Purchase Links
M.T. Bass is giving away a $25 gift certificate to one randomly selected reader during his tour.
6 comments:
Thank you for hosting today.
Hi Lisabet --
Thanks for spotlighting my Munchausen Trilogy today.
A note to your followers: The Munchausen 3-novel box set is now available for pre-order at half-price ($4.99) until Monday’s release date (Regularly $9.99).
~Mudcat
Hello, M.T. - Welcome to Beyond Romance! I hope your tour does really well. The premise of your trilogy is fascinating - and not all that far fetched.
By the way, I love your author photo ;^) First chainsaw I've ever seen in a publicity shot!
Another one I want to read
jwisley(at)aol(dot)com
Thanks again, Lisabet. I'm having a great time so far.
Would it be too far fetched to say I havested my own pulp for my paperbacks?
My next novel, Article 15, comes out in October, so maybe we'll meet up again in the fall.
~MTB
This sounds like a great sci-fi trilogy! I enjoyed the excerpt!
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