I THINK I WAS MURDERED by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker is an action-packed suspense thriller mixing artificial intelligence, grief, treasure-hunting, romance, double-crosses, and redemption.
Katrina Foster is having the second worst day of her life when the FBI raids the technology company where she works and she receives a call that her beloved grandmother, Bestemor, has died. Katrina heads home to North Haven for the funeral and to re-evaluate her life. Her husband Jason died the previous year in a car accident, and Katrina has communicated with the likeness of her dead husband through an AI Chatbot prototype developed by her company. The chatbot was created using Jason’s social media posts, text messages, and emails. Although it provides solace for Katrina to communicate with the bot, when the bot relays a message from Jason saying “I think I was murdered," Katrina questions everything she knows.
Back in North Haven, Katrina learns she has inherited her grandmother’s waffle shop. Sebastian Wallace runs the nearby Michelin-rated Beacon restaurant, and he would like to take over the waffle shop. Seb’s cooking was heavily influenced by Katrina’s grandmother, and he has loved Katrina from afar for years. Seeing her again awakens old feelings. As the two reunite, Katrina starts seeking answers about Jason’s death, and she and Seb find themselves involved in a dangerous game of cat and mouse involving a $30 million Bitcoin Satoshi Egg and an elusive suspect known as Messenja. When a young man arrives in town claiming to be Seb’s brother and Katrina’s coworker Liv arrives on her doorstep, the number of suspects increases, and Katrina doesn’t know who to believe. Will she make the right choices to solve the mystery and heal her heart?
I THINK I WAS MURDERED is a clever and sophisticated romantic suspense novel filled with intrigue and action. Integrating artificial intelligence and human emotion, readers will ponder the question as to whether this technology provides necessary comfort or delays the grieving process. Katrina is smart and resourceful but struggles to move on. The setting of North Haven, a Norwegian-influenced town filled with hygge; coziness, contentment, and a warm atmosphere, is the perfect place for Katrina to regroup after her life falls apart. Seb Wallace is the solid friend Katrina needs. He is a man with a difficult past who has succeeded through hard work and Katrina’s grandmother’s influence. Together, they tackle this smartly layered mystery involving treasure hunting, rogue players, and high-stakes peril. Filled with ominous warnings, near misses, ambushes, gunfire, and literally falling down embankments, there is plenty of non-stop action to keep readers engaged and enough twists and turns to keep readers guessing.
I THINK I WAS MURDERED is an engrossing and captivating page-turner by the dynamic writing duo of Coble and Acker.
A grieving young widow. The AI program that allows her to continue to “talk” to her husband. And a message she never expected: “I think I was murdered.”
Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about, married with an adoring husband, and had more money than she knew how to spend. Then her world combusted. Her husband, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her CEO was indicted and, as the company’s legal counsel, Katrina faces tough questions as the Feds take over and lock her out of her office. The final blow is the passing of her beloved grandmother.
Her most prized possession is the beta prototype for a new, ultra-sophisticated chatbot loaded onto her phone. The contents of Jason’s email, social media backups, pictures, and every bit of data she could find were loaded into the bot, and Katrina has “talked” to him every day for the past six months. She has been amazed at how well it works. Even the syntax and words the bot uses sound like Jason. Sometimes, she imagines he isn’t really dead and is right there beside her. She knows it’s slowing her grief recovery, but she can’t stop pretending.
On a particularly bad day, she taps out: Tell me something I don’t know. The cursor blinks for several moments and seems frozen before the reply flashes quickly onto the screen: I think I was murdered.
Distraught, Katrina returns to her cozy Norwegian-flavored hometown in the Northern California redwoods and enlists the help of Seb Wallace, local restaurateur and longtime acquaintance, to try to parse out the truth of what really happened. They must navigate the complicated paths of grief, family dynamics, and second chances, as well as the complex questions of how much control technology has. And staying alive long enough to do that is far more difficult than either of them dreamed.
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