From USA Today Bestselling Author, Robert I. Katz, comes a gripping techno-thriller, part of a multi-author series tied together by an interlocking cast of characters, all centered around the fantastic new promise of high technology and the endless possibilities for crime that technology offers, in a world where getting away with murder can be not only plausible, but easy…if you just know how.… how.
Michael Foreman is a neurosurgeon, hard-working, successful and highly respected. In his spare time, he plays the piano.
Ralph Guthrie is a gamer. He makes his living playing online games. He also plays the clarinet. Ralph Guthrie and Michael Foreman are old friends and play together in an amateur jazz band.
But when Ralph is invited to play and critique a new video game, Virtually Undead, and suffers a fatal heart attack, along with nine other players, it quickly becomes apparent that virtual reality has reached out of the virtual world and into the real.
Why has a gas explosion rocked the city? Why has the New York sewer system repeatedly expelled raw sewage into the city’s waterways? And why does a single traffic light downtown persistently malfunction, causing cars to repeatedly crash?
Are all these things tied together? If so, how and why?
When the NYPD and the FBI ask Michael Foreman to consult, he can’t resist the challenge, and finds himself quickly drawn into the escalating mayhem of a video game that’s becoming all too real.
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I must say I truly enjoyed the techno-thriller from USA Today Bestselling Author, Robert I. Katz. This is the second book I’ve read in the artificial intelligence, multi-author series and I will read more.
The story opens with unrelated events that makes the reader wonder how they could be connected. Katz does a brilliant job of allowing you to enter the virtual world of gaming and the endless possibilities that suggest it can be all too real.
Two old friends who have vastly different professions are connected via a love of music. They collide in a crime where this world may not be far off into the future. Is makes you stop and ask, could it be here now?
In a world where most of us want proven facts, there is a virtual world around us that can change your perspective on everything. Robert Katz does an excellent job on showing the possibilities of where AI can and might take us.
This was a page turner and I read it through in one sitting, not because it was short, but because it was so gripping!
This was one of those novels where I enjoyed wondering where the plot was headed! Where was the author taking the story?
There’s food for thought here as, in reality, mankind is making progress with AI, etc.
A few needed scene change markers would have been useful and the middle of the novel was a bit redundant but, heck, so are our confined at-home Covid-19 days. Start reading Virtually Undead and it’ll give you something to think about!
I’m another author in the multi-author series, but will be reading all of these “Virtually” books because high-tech crime is a super genre. Plus, although I do not personally know the author, he has a similar physician background like my own, so he’s on my radar to follow.
Scary concept!
This was an excellent story with great characters, all of the medical details right (as one would expect since the author is an MD), plenty of action, and great use of gaming and VR details. I did have one issue with the author’s style. I’m not sure if he thinks his readers have the memory of a gnat, have experienced neurological deficits, or what, but the repetition of each character’s full name over and over again nearly drove me up the wall, to the point that I mentally skipped over the last name. Otherwise, I would have wound up throwing my Kindle across the room in frustration. I have a feeling I am not the only reader who can remember a character’s name from one paragraph to the next without having it literally spelled out for me! I will be looking for more of Dr. Katz’s books to read, but I’m hoping the next one gives me a break on character names.
A brilliant tale from the ‘High Tech Crime Solver’ series, ‘Virtually Undead’ by USA Today bestselling author Robert I. Katz is a wonderful mixture of medical mystery, police procedural and cutting-edge techno-thriller. The series itself explores new and interesting possibilities of how new technology can be used for crimes. The police, of course, are quite a few steps behind the curve in this respect and need to call in Katz’s protagonist, neurosurgeon Michael Foreman, to help them navigate what must be the strangest case they have ever handled. Ten players, of hundreds beta testing a state of the art virtual reality game, all suddenly die of the same cause. Was the game too realistic it provoked the premature demise of these participants? Or are we faced with a complex serial killing, spread over ten different cities? Unfortunate accident or the work of a diabolical murderer?
The story, though undoubtedly complicated because of the nature of the case, is so well told, the complexities so well explained in terms the average reader can comprehend, that non-geeks will really enjoy the book. Katz’s characters, some borrowed from other books in the series, others unique to this writer, are superbly drawn and highly believable and help the story move forward at an enjoyable fast pace.
Definitely an interesting and original crime thriller and highly recommended.