Bruce Holsinger has a real knack for crafting novels that tap into some of our most pressing contemporary issues, raising important, discussion-worthy questions while also ratcheting up the tension and suspense in the style of the most riveting thrillers. His previous novels, like THE DISPLACEMENTS and THE GIFTED SCHOOL, have shown this technique skillfully employed on the realms of climate change and school admissions. Now, in CULPABILITY, he turns his attention to the issue that may well define our current time: artificial intelligence.

Specifically, Holsinger is concerned with the ethics of AI, with questions like whether and how machine learning systems can be programmed to make ethical choices (particularly when their creators are motivated by profit rather than by altruism) and --- most pressingly for the Cassidy-Shaw family at the novel’s center --- where to cast blame when something goes awry.

"CULPABILITY is a compelling study of family dynamics, as well as a briskly propulsive and suspenseful read. The twists at the end of the book come thick and fast, and even if not all of them will come as a shock to every reader, at least one of them certainly will."

These are the kinds of questions that Lorelei Shaw has spent her career considering. A brilliant computer scientist, Lorelei is in demand all over the world as an expert and consultant on the algorithms used to train AI systems. Her husband, Noah, is a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions. In most other families, he’d be held up as a model of professional success. But at home, he spends most of his time both in awe of Lorelei’s brilliance and a bit cowed by it. He masks his feelings of inferiority by helping Lorelei manage her obsessive-compulsive tendencies and many of the family’s day-to-day logistics.

Most of those logistics center on oldest son Charlie, who has just graduated from high school and is getting ready to enter the University of North Carolina. He has been recruited to play lacrosse, but he has one more tournament with his high school traveling team before he moves on to collegiate sports. That’s where the family is heading at the start of the book.

Charlie is at the wheel of their state-of-the-art autonomous minivan, with his father riding shotgun and his mother in the back working on her latest calculations. Middle sister Alice (who resents all the attention Charlie gets in the family) and youngest daughter Izzy (who worships him) are along for the ride as well. Most of them are looking at their individual devices --- which is why no one sees it coming when Charlie, alerted to an oncoming vehicle, jerks the wheel of the self-driving car…and causes a massive accident that kills an elderly couple.

Some members of Noah’s family emerge unscathed while others are dealing with more serious but manageable injuries. It’s undeniable, though, that they are lucky to have survived. The Cassidy-Shaws decide to spend a few days recuperating at a rental home on Chesapeake Bay, which they discover shares an inlet with a massive, high-security complex belonging to none other than tech pioneer Daniel Monet, one of the wealthiest men in the world. Charlie and Daniel’s daughter, Eurydice, immediately hit it off, and Noah suspects that Lorelei is also familiar with Daniel, or at least with his staff. When near-disaster seems to follow them on vacation, the sequence of events causes Noah to doubt his entire belief system, especially when it’s revealed that almost no one is telling the whole truth --- and everyone shares the burden of culpability.

Noah’s narration is interspersed with other documents, including transcripts of Alice’s “conversations” with a chatbot and excerpts from Lorelei’s book about the ethics of AI. The portions of the novel that touch on these questions are almost guaranteed to spark lively conversation and debate. But even in the absence of these broader philosophical and ethical questions, CULPABILITY is a compelling study of family dynamics, as well as a briskly propulsive and suspenseful read. The twists at the end of the book come thick and fast, and even if not all of them will come as a shock to every reader, at least one of them certainly will.

Pick this one up if you want to consider some of today’s most pressing issues --- and if you'd like to do so in the context of a truly thrilling story.