Looking For a Good Book

Raymond Electromatic is an assassin.  An assassin posing as a private gumshoe. Raymond Electromatic is also a robot.  And not just any robot … he is the last robot since the Department of Robot Labor (DORL) saw to the end of robot production. Ray Electromatic is very good at his job but he has one serious flaw.  His internal memory tape only provides enough memory for twenty-four hours.  For anything beyond that he relies on his provider/boss, Ada to keep him in the know and on track with his assignments. Ada is a computer.  A desktop computer that sits in the office of the Electromatic Detective Agency.

In I Only Killed Him Once, the detective office is visited by a mysterious man dressed in black who comes to issue a warning that Ray and Ada are in danger.  Ray has the distinct impression that he has seen this man before but he can’t remember why or when (24 hour memory, remember). When he asks about it, Ada tells him to forget about it, which is unlike her. Not long after, when Ray comes to the office again because Ada isn’t responding to him, he discovers that the agency office has been raided and Ada is gone. It appears as though she may have been dismantled by DORL.

Raymond now has only twenty-four hours of memory tape to find Ada, uncover the identity of the man in black, and determine how the dark stranger fit in to Ada’s disappearance.

I’ve really come to enjoy the Raymond Electromatic mysteries.  They are ripping good yarns! This book made me smile with the very first sentence: “They say you should never start with the weather, but look, it was a dark and stormy night and I don’t care who knows it.” And I smiled the rest of the way through.

Author Adam Christopher puts together a very nice mystery, with a few surprises along the way and does it with this very unique world he has created – a 1960’s alternate era with a very futuristic AI computer and robot acting like 1950’s noir detectives.  Does that sound like fun?  It is! But it’s more than just fun because the mystery itself is worth exploring.

It makes me sad, however, to read that this is likely the last book in the series.  I could read a new Raymond Electromatic Mystery once a year for a very long time if they were made available.  But since they likely won’t be, you should be sure to pick up your copy now.

Looking for a good book? I Only Killed Him Once by Adam Christopher is the last (?) book in the Raymond Electromatic Mystery series and it is a fun science fiction mystery that you can easily enjoy.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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I Only Killed Him Once

author: Adam Christopher

series: Raymond Electromatic Mysteries #3

publisher: Tor Books

ISBN: 0765379228

hardcover, 256 pages