"Charming mystery with a delightful heroine"

Artificial Intelligence Personality (AIP) Turing Hopper has gained sentience and with the help of her two friends is now in charge of Universal Libraries and Alan Grace Inc. All three sentient beings are on the lookout for Nestor Garcia because he knows about Turing and wants to steal her just like he did her clone T2. When someone uses his credit card to make online charges and have them delivered to a house where he family is on vacation, Tim, a private investigator sets up a surveillance, which collapses when he falls asleep on the job.

When he wakes up, the person who was supposed to pick up the packages is dead. And he has to talk his way out of jail. Turing hacks into databases where she finds that a stolen credit card ring is operating in her part of the city. That information leads them to a collection agency where a skip tracer who is the ringleader has all the credit cards, the names, what was purchased and where it was delivered in a spreadsheet. When he disappears, Turing and company set out to find him because they want to know if he is connected to Nestor.

Turing is absolutely adorable as she tries to understand how carbon based entities operate. She constantly contrasts their personality traits to that of AIPs and decides she wants to be part of both worlds. Turing's lawyer is let in on the AIP's secret and id already making plans for her to gain recognition in the courts. Turing wants to keep a very low profile until Nester is caught and T2 is returned to her. Readers will find ACCESS DENIED a charming mystery with a delightful heroine.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted December 28, 2004

Summary

When Turing Hopper, Artificial Intelligence Personality extraordinaire, learns that criminal Nestor Garcia's once- dormant credit card has been doing a lot of shopping lately, she begins to do some sleuthing—and finds out the loot's shown up at an empty bungalow. So Turing gets her human friends to stake out the vicinity. But when one of them sees something he wishes he hadn't—and gets charged with murder—everyone will have to pull together to clear his name. The only way to do it is to find the guilty party—by luring him to attack them. But doing so might very well get them "accidentally" deleted...