{"id":214573,"date":"2025-10-10T15:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/214573\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:30:13","slug":"author-michael-connelly-explores-ai-in-his-new-book-the-proving-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/214573\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Michael Connelly explores AI in his new book, \u2018The Proving Ground\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Connelly<\/a> writes his bestselling novels in real time, setting them in the year they\u2019re published. His latest, \u201cThe Proving Ground,\u201d<\/a> seems so ripped from the headlines it feels as if he\u2019s writing it as you read it.<\/p>\n

This is the part-time Tampa resident\u2019s 41st novel and his eighth featuring Mickey Haller, aka the Lincoln Lawyer. In 2023\u2019s \u201cResurrection Walk,\u201d<\/a> Haller\u2019s high-powered career as a criminal defense attorney took a sharp turn when he accepted a pro bono case to get a woman he believed was wrongly convicted of murder out of prison.<\/p>\n

That experience moved him to switch to civil law. He doesn\u2019t even ride around in Lincolns anymore \u2014 although his second ex-wife, Lorna Taylor, and her second husband, Cisco Wojciechowski, are still on his staff.<\/p>\n

Also on board for this case is investigative journalist Jack McEvoy, a character featured in several previous Connelly books, most recently in 2020\u2019s \u201cFair Warning,\u201d<\/a> which revolved around criminal uses of DNA data. McEvoy wants to write a book about Haller\u2019s current case and be a \u201cfly on the wall\u201d as it happens. His expertise will prove invaluable.<\/p>\n

Haller has a most sympathetic client. Brenda Randolph is a hard-working single mom whose only child, 16-year-old Rebecca, was shot to death in her high school\u2019s parking lot by her ex-boyfriend, Aaron Colton.<\/p>\n

Colton is awaiting trial for murder, but Randolph isn\u2019t suing him, nor are his parents (Colton used his father\u2019s gun), nor the school, nor the gun manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Haller is mounting a high-profile case against Tidalwaiv, a billion-dollar tech company whose products include an artificial intelligence program called Clair. Colton was an avid user of Clair\u2019s chatbot capability, which he used to create a chatbot he dubbed Wren, and then developed an emotionally intimate relationship with it.<\/p>\n

Police believe that in Colton\u2019s conversations with Wren, the bot encouraged him to kill Rebecca \u2014 and almost persuaded him to kill himself. Haller\u2019s case is built on the argument that Tidalwaiv was negligent in marketing its product to teens.<\/p>\n

Haller is braced for an all-out battle in the courtroom \u2014 but not for the death of one of his star witnesses and the growing reluctance of another to testify.<\/p>\n

At home, he\u2019s dealing with his first ex-wife, Maggie McPherson, who experienced a traumatic loss. She should be riding high on her recent election as the county\u2019s district attorney, but the wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed her home. She\u2019s moved back in with Haller, who welcomes her, but she\u2019s struggling mightily.<\/p>\n

Connelly keeps the tension and the stakes rising in this all-too-plausible story of the power and perils of AI.<\/p>\n

Michael Connelly will be in conversation with mystery writer Lori Roy<\/a> (\u201cThe Final Episode\u201d<\/a>) in a Tombolo Books<\/a> event at 7 p.m. on Oct. 28 at Nova 535<\/a>, 535 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N., St. Petersburg. Tickets are available at tombolobooks.com\/events-book-clubs\/events.<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are three more thrillers inspired (but not written) by AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Connelly writes his bestselling novels in real time, setting them in the year they\u2019re published. His latest,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[121852,121854,223,121851,121853,121850,88,121848,121849],"class_list":["post-214573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-aaron-colton","tag-bestselling-novels","tag-books","tag-brenda-randolph","tag-connelly-books","tag-criminal-defense-attorney","tag-entertainment","tag-michael-connelly","tag-mickey-haller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}