Mashaw’s tech thriller offers a chilling assessment of artificial intelligence’s rapid entanglement in great questions of human life.

Medical resident Maria Castillo is in her first year of residency at University Hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Chris Defont is a talented coder who recently started work in the hospital’s information technology division. It’s a time of great technological change in the medical profession, and their workplace has just launched a new AI medical assistant called Metis that monitors every doctor’s decisions, whatever their expertise, and offers tips and criticism. Metis’ advice draws on massive libraries of knowledge and is often incredibly thorough, and many doctors and nurses are thankful for the help it’s able to provide. But some are unnerved and distrustful of any technology that has power over questions of life and death. One of these critics is Maria’s attending physician and supervisor, Victor Hendrix, a former hacker who believes in the knowledge and wisdom of his team. Maria and Chris form a budding friendship and then a tentative romance after a rocky first meeting; they find themselves brought together by the fact that they both begin to notice flaws in the Metis system. At the very least, the new tool frequently chooses palliative and even dangerous care options for patients who could be saved. When Metis, and the corporate interests backing it, cover their tracks by blaming Maria and Chris for the system’s failures, the two band together to get to the bottom of the mystery. Over the course of this thriller, Mashaw delivers a story that’s akin to other tales of promising tech gone wrong, such as Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park (1990) and his screenplay for the 1973 film Westworld. Although it’s set in a modern-day hospital, or perhaps one that’s a few years in the future, readers may find the technological aspects, and their accompanying concerns, to be chillingly familiar. Its exploration of giving too much power to a technology that few people completely understand seems especially timely.

An engaging medical thriller with real-world relevance.

In this medical thriller, an exiled physician is drawn back to duty when illness shadows an isolated commune.

Cyrus Darian, once a practicing physician, has traded hospital hallways for hiking trails, retreating into solitude in the American wilderness. While passing through Oregon, he encounters Brent Carlson, a gravely injured member of the insular Reckoning Grove commune—a group viewed with suspicion by surrounding towns. Cyrus saves his life and then takes him to a local hospital, where Brent dies suddenly and unexpectedly. His death doesn’t make sense to Cyrus, who finds that he can’t simply walk away. He remains near the commune and begins to notice unsettling consistencies among the residents: persistent fatigue, unexplained physical decline, mysterious neurological symptoms, and a shared reluctance to seek outside help. The atmosphere is thick with distrust, and the commune’s insularity complicates Cyrus’ attempts to ask questions; local health officials dismiss his concerns, viewing him as an outsider with no standing. Soon, the doctor starts receiving anonymous warnings from someone who wants his inquiry to end, escalating from vague cautions to pointed threats. As the body count rises, Cyrus must rely on clinical reasoning and sharp instinct, piecing together symptoms while navigating secrecy and suspicion. His internal struggle, balancing a desire for detachment with an unshakable commitment to do no harm, adds an emotional undercurrent to the novel’s procedural elements. The Mashaws weave in diagnostic details without letting them overwhelm the narrative, allowing the medical investigation to propel rather than stall the plot. That said, the story treads some familiar ground; the mysterious commune, the skeptical authorities, and the reluctant-hero arc follow well-worn genre conventions, and many characters lack psychological complexity. The novel also favors momentum over layered plot development. Still, the authors succeed in delivering a cohesive, accessible, and entertaining thriller that’s easy to follow—and difficult to put down.

A solid and fast-moving, if sometimes-formulaic, mystery tale.