The Mocking Program

It’s a rainy night in the Montezuma Strip and Inspector Angel Cardenas and his partner Fredoso Hyaki are looking at a carcass picked over by organleggers. The ID says he’s George Anderson. His DNA says he’s Wayne Brummel from Harlingen, Texas. A call to his address is answered by Susan Anderson – not his wife, but she’ll show up the next morning at the morgue to identify what’s left of him.

Except she doesn’t. So Angel and Hyaki go to visit her. And almost get killed in an elaborately booby-trapped house, a house that Anderson and her twelve-year daughter Katla have fled.

Angel finds out Susan used to be married and Brummel was an employee of her husband. Said husband was Cleator Mockerin, a big time mobster that several show more countries have never been able to convict of anything though the want to. Susan and Brummel stole money from Mockerin and fled to live under assumed identities. Now Mockerin evidently has several hired guns looking for Susan – and especially Katla who appears to be a very bright girl who assisted her father in his business.

The trail will lead from the alleys and sex clubs of Montezuma Strip to Costa Rica to Mockerin’s underwater lair.

It was nice to see Foster bringing back, at least in brief references, his girlfriend Hypatia Spango and his former seeing eye dog Charliebo, now translated to cyberspace, who were introduced with Angel’s first appearance in “Sanctuary”.

Foster opens up his world more in this novel not only in settings but in scientific and technological developments like the wugs, a self-replicating AI that evolved from underground utility maintenance robots, and a group of uplifted primates at a Costa Rican preserve.

Foster also has an interesting idea with the “soche”. In a world where education in the standard subjects is done at home via the internet, the soche has group instruction in

“male-female relationships, dating, the institution of marriage, sex, how to open and manage a bank account, how to perform simple household repairs, deal with credit, purchase a residence, handle lawyers, consult with doctors, plan a vacation, shop for goods and services, buy and cook food”

Cardenas shows considerable leniency with some criminals or does them small, illegal favors with the idea their gratitude will supply information he needs. That includes a strange “religion” of ascetic hackers who help him locate the Andersons. Cardenas is clearly affectionate towards kids and is willing to steer youngsters away from a life of crime. However, he realizes that there is no way he should have children of his own since his talents as an Intuit would provide a very stifling atmosphere to a child.

Foster does some interesting things with the MacGuffin of the Mocking Program that Katla is said to be working on, an effort to subvert the encryption used in commercial transactions as well as where Mockerin is hiding out, and where Mockerin is hiding out.

It’s not a superb mystery or novel, but it’s plenty entertaining as a mystery and trip through an interesting world. show less