Of Mice and Hitmen (The Day Eight Series, Part 2) by Ray Mazza

Published in 2012 by CreateSpace

Yesterday, I posted a review of Book 1 of this series ( The Reborn ) and I wrote a lengthy rave review. I am not going to go into all of that here. Suffice it to say, I really liked Book 1.

Of Mice and Hitmen is where the series really hits its stride. In Book 1, programmer Trevor Leighton discovers that his employer, a tech firm called Day Eight, has created simulated human life in a computer. Not just Artificial Intelligence, but simulated life write down to the cellular level.  These computerized people are called simulants.

Trevor has already met one fairly simple version of the simulant program, a simulant 1.0 if you will. In Book 2 he meets Ezra, the most updated version of the simulant program. She lives in an accelerated world, programmed to go faster so that she can complete projects in the real world quicker. Her name is Ezra, which is an odd name for a female, but it means "helper" in Hebrew and she is being used to work on any number of projects for Day Eight - new computers, cures for illnesses, etc. She has lived for thousands of years in her simulated world and is far smarter than any human being has ever been in terms of raw knowledge.

But, there is another, darker purpose as well. Leighton senses this and narrowly escapes an attempt on his life. When a series of political assassinations change the results of elections, Leighton works to figure out how Day Eight, Ezra and the political chaos are all tied together while he is on the run.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Of Mice and Hitmen (The Day Eight Series, Part 2) by Ray Mazza.

Reviewed on July 17, 2012.