How about a detective that’s not a human? Not even alive? Would that be quirky enough?

Turing Hopper is the name given to an artificial intelligence personality, or AIP, by her programmer creator Zack. He created several AIP’s as part of an online research service. The AIP’s deal with clients, do the research, and are programmed to interact like a human researcher would – chat, anticipate and even throw in a little personality. Zack crossed some sort of boundary with Turing because she moves from “like human” to as human” to sentient. Turing’s data profile was loaded with all sorts of mystery books so of course she begins to think like a detective and becomes an AI sleuth.

We never get to meet Zack, whose murder is the series first crime. Donna Andrews, the author of the Turing AI series, gives Turing a couple of fellow employees of Zack’s, that she uses like gofers, but as they pick up on Turing’s sentience become her friends and sleuth side kicks. Maude and Tim develop into an executive and a private detective under Turing’s tutelage and become her prime interface with the human world. Turing also has relationships with other AI’s that appear to be a little less sentient than Turing, but clever enough to frustrate humans when necessary to bring the story along.

Andrews does some clever things with Turing to enable her to interact with the world outside of her computer hard drive residence and eventually finds a way to port Turing to other processors. Actually I found much of the technology to be more creative than some of the story lines. Donna Andrews has brought Turing to life in three novels: “You’ve Got Murder”, “Click Here For Murder”, and “Access Denied”. Turing meets my criteria for quirky, and Donna Andrews makes her fun to meet. However, I haven’t been tempted to try her other series that seems to be “bird oriented”.