Today’s AI has become very sophisticated. For instance, there are now AI apps that can mimic a real person’s voice. They’re being used in some cases to scam people (e.g., ‘Hi, Mom, it’s me – can you send me money? I’m in real trouble’). Other apps can write essays and do a lot more. And of course, online avatars can look like whatever a person wants, so it’s very hard to tell who’s on the other side. It’s scary if you think about it. And as a quick look at crime fiction shows, not knowing can be very dangerous.
Even before modern AI technology, people misrepresented themselves. For instance, in Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, Anne Bedingfield decides on impulse to take a trip on the HMS Kilmorden Castle, destination Cape Town. Along the way, she gets involved in a very dangerous web of intrigue, stolen jewels, and murder. She also meets a man named Harry Rayburn, who has his own secrets. After the ship docks at Cape Town, Anne receives a note from Harry, asking her to meet him. She goes, only to find that it was a ruse to abduct her. She manages to escape, but she’s left badly injured. Harry finds her and nurses her. The two fall in love, and they agree to a code word they’ll use in any future notes. It doesn’t keep them completely out of trouble, but at least it’ll be a sign that the note is bona fide.
The real action in C.J. Box’s Below Zero begins when Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett’s teenaged daughter Sheridan receives an eerie text:
From: AK Sherry, is this U? I got your # from a dude named Jason at the old house. U R not gonna believe who this is. Reply by txt but DON’T CALL. DO NOT CALL
The sender seems to be her adopted sister April, but that’s the problem: April was killed six years earlier. So, the sender could very well not be April at all. If the sender isn’t April, then someone has co-opted her identity to get to Sheridan. That in itself is dangerous. But if the sender actually is April, then she could be in grave danger, and Pickett can’t let that possibility go. So, he decides to find out who really sent that text. And that could cause plenty of danger of its own.
Cat Connor’s Killerbyte introduces Ellie Conway (later Iverson). She’s an ex-pat New Zealander who’s an FBI special agent. She is also a poet who co-moderates an online chat forum called Cobwebs. One day, Ellie has to bar one of the members of the community; he’s understandably furious with her and later finds his way to her home, where he threatens her. He’s arrested, but he makes bail. Later, he’s murdered, and his body is found in the trunk of Ellie’s car. There’s a poem near his body that suggests that someone in the poetry group might be responsible. The question is, of course, who? Then, another member of the group is murdered; again, a poem is found near the body. Now, Ellie and her partner Mac have to find out which group member is hiding a murderous identity before they become victims themselves.
Sinéad Crowley’s Can Anybody Help Me? is the story of Yvonne Mulhern, who’s recently moved from London to Dublin, so that her husband Gerry can take advantage of a good job offer. With them, they’ve brought their infant daughter. As a first-time mother, Yvonne is stressed and exhausted. It doesn’t help much that she doesn’t really know anyone in Dublin. Then, she discovers an online support group called Netmammy. The members welcome Yvonne, and she gradually becomes friends with them, even though they’ve never met. When one of the members goes ‘off the grid,’ Yvonne becomes concerned. She tries to get the police involved, but there’s not much they can do without evidence of a crime. When the body of an unidentified woman is discovered in an empty apartment, there’s a possibility it might be Yvonne’s missing friend. If it is, then someone in Netmammy is a killer hiding behind a friendly online presence…
There’s a really interesting case of not knowing who’s behind an identity in Janice MacDonald’s Another Margaret. Miranda ‘Randy’ Craig is a sessional lecturer who works mostly in Edmonton. Randy hears from a friend that a new book, Seven Bird Saga, will soon be published. The author, Margaret Ahlers, is a notoriously reclusive writer whose work Randy studied for her master’s thesis. That’s how Randy knows that Margaret Ahlers died several years ago, and that Seven Bird Saga is very likely not her work. If it’s not, then the question is, who wrote the new book? Was it ‘cribbed’ from Ahler’s notes? Was the book entirely written by someone else? In order to find the answers, Randy returns to the work she did for her degree, and slowly puts the pieces together. But what she doesn’t know is how dangerous it can be to unmask someone…
It’s easier than we like to think to pretend to be someone else online. Some people completely invent fictional ‘selves.’ And they use identity faking for all sorts of purposes. It’s a sobering, even frightening reality in life, but it can add an interesting layer in crime fiction.
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Steve Perry’s Oh,Sherrie.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 
Really interesting post, Margot. I’ve always thought, particularly from my reading of GA crime, that it was easier in the past to change identities and fool people, but actually nowadays the sophisticated technology we have means that a good number of those online are really not what they seem. It’s a scary world out there…
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Thanks, KBR. I’m glad you found the post interesting. You’re right that it’s scary out there. It’s especially scary if one has (grand)children who use social media. Many of today’s kids are fairly savvy, but you never know. As you say, GA crime had its own challenges for detectives. But today’s online world is definitely something else again!
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The BBC has been on a campaign all week to terrify us over AI – apparently they don’t know that those of us who watched Star Trek in our youth have been terrified at the idea of AI for decades already! I can’t think of an online identity plot, but the BL’s most recent ECR Lorac, Death of an Author, is based around a woman who writes as a man in order to be taken seriously as a literary writer – or does she? Is the writer really a man and for some reason she’s pretending to be him? The question becomes more important when a man who might or might not be the writer is found dead. Another thoroughly enjoyable one, and lots of thought=provoking stuff about whether it should be possible to tell a person’s gender from their writing alone.
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Oh, that Lorac does sound good, FictionFan! And those are some interesting questions about gender identity, names, the whole thing. I think that’s actually still a relevant topic, as there are some genres in which it’s ‘expected’ that the author will be of one gender or another. As for AI, yes, we’ve known about it for years; I remember what Star Trek and The Twilight Zone were like! I took my warning! And that’s not enough, there’s 2001…. That said, though, I do think people are taking advantage of AI’s capabilities for spamming, hacking, and worse. Things that are happening more frequently as AI gets more sophisticated. We shall see what happens in the next years I suppose!
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It’s a brave new world out there. I loved your use of Another Margaret. It involved such clever use of identities.
I am glad that crime fiction writers use their talents for fiction. They could create such mischief with their imaginations.
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I agree, Bill, that Another Margaret has a really clever use of identities. It’s done effectively, too. And you’re right that it’s a brave new world. AI has changed a lot, and I suspect there will be other things, too. Fortunately we crime writers are law-abiding citizens who only wreak havoc in the world of fiction.
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The Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth was such a book where you didn’t know who to trust, if memory serves anyway. I just checked my review and, oddly, I even said that it reminded me of Christie’s Man in the Brown Suit. Not really crime but certainly ‘mystery’ and that’s Mary Stewart who specialised a bit in sticking two love interests in for the heroine, one of whom was a bad’un but she didn’t know which. Great fun.
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That’s an interesting point, Cath. Things (and people) are definitely not what they seem in that book! And now you mention it, that one does have some things in common with The Man in the Brown Suit. I hadn’t thought about it, but I see what you mean. And thanks for the reminder of Mary Stewart. She did a great job building romantic suspense, didn’t she?
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I’ll add another title to your list, Margot… my current read, Death of an Author by E.C.R. Lorac. I’m about a quarter in and the poor police have no idea who’s who or even if there’s a murder to investigate! Lorac never disappoints.
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Ooh, that sounds interesting, Cath! I do like Lorac’s writing. Funny, isn’t it, how she’s just being re-discovered. It makes me wonder how some authors are forgotten like that. At any rate, I hope you’re enjoying the novel.
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AI can be really disturbing, not knowing who to trust but I bet in the future it will make some interesting mystery novels.
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AI really can be unsettling, Carol, that’s for sure. Among many other things, you don’t know who/what is on the other side of that computer connection.
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Technology today presents terrifying possibilities. As cool as AI is, if someone decides to impersonate you or even erase you, it’s possible (if they know what they’re doing). The whole hiding behind a mask thing adds a great layer of suspense in crime fiction. I think with AI getting more advanced, our lives will drastically change in the next 10 or 20 years. And I wonder what fiction will look like then. It’ll be the stuff some science fiction writers dreamed of.
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I think you’re probably right, OP, that our lives will be quite different as the next years go by. AI will, of course, change things, and it will get better. I’m sure that will impact what fiction looks like, too. Even now, as you say, it’s unsettling what AI can do.
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According to some reports it steals from blogs, etc and puts together it own fiction when asked to. I’m sure it’ll come up with its own novel series in a few years featuring a ‘good, caring AI who wants to usher humanity into a new epoch.’ Idealistic stuff with terrifying undercurrents.
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You put that very well, OP! Idealistic but with terrifying undercurrents….
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