The Automatic Detective

By: A. Lee Martinez

Narrated by: Marc Vietor

Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

Even in Empire City, a town where weird science is the hope for tomorrow, it's hard for a robot to make his way. It's even harder for a robot named Mack Megaton, a hulking machine designed to bring mankind to its knees. But Mack's not interested in world domination. He's just a bot trying to get by, trying to demonstrate that he isn't just an automated smashing machine, and to earn his citizenship in the process. It should be as easy as crushing a tank for Mack, but some bots just can't catch a break.

When Mack's neighbors are kidnapped, Mack sets off on a journey through the dark alleys and gleaming skyscrapers of Empire City. Along the way, he runs afoul of a talking gorilla, a brainy dame, a mutant lowlife, a little green mob boss, and the secret conspiracy at the heart of Empire's founders - not to mention more trouble than he bargained for. What started out as one missing family becomes a battle for the future of Empire and every citizen that calls her home.

©2008 A. Lee Martinez (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Martinez tickles the funny bone in this delightful, fast-paced mishmash of SF and hard-boiled detective story.... Eccentric characters, all of whom are clever twists on stereotypes, populate a smart, rocket-fast read with a clever, twisty plot that comes to a satisfying conclusion." (Publishers Weekly)

“This combination sci-fi/hard-boiled detective story is a hoot….Narrator Marc Vietor approaches the story with a classic noir tone that is hilarious.” (AudioFile)

good story

Where does The Automatic Detective rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

the story was good a little dated. Old Sci-Fi

Who was your favorite character and why?

Good list of characters, interesting characters

Which scene was your favorite?

Some good action

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

no moving

Recommended!

A very fun and enjoyable read. It's wholesome and has and unique view of a dirty, spunky future. Love the... what do you call them... characters.

Great sense of humor

A Lee Martinez is such a great author. The characters and worlds he creates are so inventive and funny. This is about a robot who is in his worlds equivalent of the US DACA program. DATA if you will, (Delayed Action for Technical Admittance). So MAC is trying to keep his head down, follow the rules and jump through the hoops that the government wants him to go through so he can become a full fledged sentient citizen. His life took a different path when he came home to find the people he had come to know as his family were kidnapped. Excitement, hilarity, feelings ensue. Part mystery, part coming of age all A Lee Martinez.

Terrific Joke Finally Wears Thin Near the End

This is a funny premise, executed almost as well as I can imagine it. Our detective hero, Mac, is a robot created as a killer by an evil genius. By the time we meet him, though, he’s developed consciousness and sworn off evil. He drives a cab, keeps his head down, and has almost no friends while he waits to earn citizenship in this steampunk city of rotary phones and sentient robots. When the kids next door get kidnapped as part of a deep-seated conspiracy, he sets out, detective-style, to find them.

I’ve seen similar concepts burn out quickly. (See Rex Nihilo for one.) Sometimes, when the joke is in the premise, it’s easy to get lazy as you write. Martinez doesn’t fall for that, though. He’s consistently clever in his language and his juxtapositions. To take one early example, it’s deeply clever that he’s both a “Mac” – as in the Apple computer – and a “mack” which was a generic nickname for anyone who drove for a living.

Martinez is terrific with the language throughout, taking such laughs where he finds them but never overdoing them. Instead, he gives us a nice range of characters, all clearly modeled on hardboiled types, but growing out of his concept as well. There’s the 800-pound gorilla with a taste for contemporary literature; the robot who boots up with the default personality of the loyal, snappy secretary; and the honest cop who happens to resemble an exotic monkey. We get all that with humor and consistency.

There are a couple of spots that seem to strain the premise, though. The almost femme fatale, a 21-year-old beauty who’s also the best scientist in town, is odd in her taste in lovers: first there’s the four-armed low-life thug and then there’s Mac. It isn’t clear how or why she’s interested in him, and that’s a bigger elision than most of what goes on.

More troubling in the long run is that the noir aspect of things gets obscured (or even mocked) in the way the central conflict unfolds. This is almost note-perfect for the first half – and I’m deeply impressed – but then it has to make more of the ultimate bad guys. That means turning a robot/technology fantasy into an outer space alien fantasy. I get that Martinez painted himself into something of a corner – and he makes good humor out of it – but it seems an unnecessarily complicated way of filling out the plot.

In other words, this is at its best when it’s playing with atmosphere, but it needs a plot – a silly one – to keep things moving. As I got deeper into the second half, when the plot becomes more central, I found I was in something of a hurry to finish up.

So, be alert to what you’re getting. It’s hard to imagine doing this any better than Martinez does it, but, hard as he tries, he hits what seems a ceiling to this kind of project in the end.

Down-on-luck AI robot turned noir detective-great!

Dashiell Hammett would be proud. For those familiar with A. Lee Martinez, this is his take on a hard-boiled, noir, sci-fi detective story and it works great.

The setting is Empire City, a futuristic city with the feel of Chicago or New York circa 1940. The protagonist is Mack Megaton, an AI robot built by a mad scientist for world domination who defied his programming. Now he's driving cabs while on probation, trying to earning citizenship while scraping by. But the only people that matter to him, his tenement neighbor and her kids have been kidnapped....

Witty, smart hard-boiled noir

Would you consider the audio edition of The Automatic Detective to be better than the print version?

n/a

What other book might you compare The Automatic Detective to and why?

Dashiell Hammett - because of the film-noir style

Have you listened to any of Marc Vietor’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but I very much liked this one

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I practically did - but I didn't want it to end, so I forced myself to make it last

Any additional comments?

I didn't expect much out of the title but I found the book to be a witty and smart adaptation of the film-noir-style detective story. It delivered.

Very fun, and well read.

What made the experience of listening to The Automatic Detective the most enjoyable?

The reader brought the characters to life.

What did you like best about this story?

It was a fun, comic twist on the noir genre (and a send up of science fiction at the same time).

Have you listened to any of Marc Vietor’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Extreme, perhaps not. But I definitely laughed.

Any additional comments?

Highly recommended.

The Day the Noir Stood Still

Well, there is very little standing around in this face paced action packed sci-fi retro-noir genre mash-up. That field may already be wide and ever-growing, but Lee Martinez injects a welcome note of good humor into his entry, a welcome relief from his usual formula of monsters or other types of supernatural beings living in a normal contemporary milieu.

What makes this one so much fun is that Martinez goes all in on the mid-century modern pulp genres, never pretending that this is anything other than that. So we have flying saucers, ray guns, little green men, and robots of all sizes and shapes on the SF side, and on the noir side, we have a hard-boiled hero in a fedora with a femme fatale chasing down leads in the grimier corners of Empire City, a dark retro-futuristic vision of New York City that presages the look of the TV show Gotham.

The twist in all of this is that our cynical tough-talking protagonist, Mack Megaton, is a battle bot -- picture Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still (in fact, Mack says he walked out of that movie halfway through when he realized that Gort wasn't the hero). And of course, despite being an emotional-less robot, Mack develops a soft spot for humans, especially the family next door, which propels him through his part in the story.

I like ALM's books, their good humor, their upbeat tone. But I've grown tired of his formula. No wonder that my favorite book of his is Emperor Mollusk, which falls outside that formula. But contrary to Mollusk, the narration does not do this book justice. It should be funnier -- the narrator should have better comedic instincts than the voice in our head. Unfortunately, Marc Vietor only achieves that when voicing other characters. But 95% of the book is Mack's first-person inner monologue, read straight, without irony -- not what this material calls for.

Great combo of narration and writting.

What a good, fun story. Between the narrator and author the story has this hard boiled 1950's feel. Would like to see a follow up story, enjoyed getting to know Mack and how he gets along in the world. It was nice to see a main character that is not human. I've all ready listened to Gil's All Fright Dinner, plan on getting my hands on the rest of Martinez works.

A fun and funny mashup of noir and sci-fi for a wide audience

Listened to this on a family road trip and it was perfect. Fun noir detective science fiction with a sentient robot detective, not too serious (a bit ridiculous really) and made us laugh out loud throughout. Was looking for something as fun to listen to to as Ready Player One and it delivered. Reminded me of The Caves of Steel by Asimov.