If you created three virtual copies of your mind, and stripped one of them of all corporeal concerns, and another of all sense of aging, and found out one of them was a killer, which would you think it was?

This is the question facing Peter Hobson, in Robert J. Sawyer's book The Terminal Experiment.  Although the book was written waaay back in 1994, it takes place in 2011 (which happens to be this year), so it's interesting not just as a story, but as a comparison of where the author thought we'd be by now, and where we are.

First off, the story.  It hooks you right from the start when you find out the main character is the primary suspect in a double homicide, and the lead detective is on her deathbed as victim number three.  We rewind then to learn how things got to the their present state, and you learn about Peter, his wife Cathy, his career in medical scanning equipment, and how seemingly unrelated events can combine into a hell of a mess.

It starts a bit slow, but as things progress you realise those mundane bits were crucial ingredients to the murders.  It's a mystery as you try to figure out who committed the murders, considering the real Peter would never do such a thing.

Now, as for the technology, I think Sawyer was both over estimating and under estimating human progress.  In the book, we apparently have the technology to use nanobots to render ourselves practically immortal (for a hefty sum of money), video phones are commonplace, and Star Trek computers running every home.  Obviously we don't.  On the flip side, we all supposedly still use dialup modems for internet access, and PCMCIA cards for portable storage.
Amazingly, he got a lot of things bang on.  He talked about ebooks, in dash GPS, voice activated car phones, biometrics security, and TVs you hang on your wall.

In the end, I found myself imagining it was still set in the future.  That sat best in my mind.

It's a good book, with a tight story.  Just the sort of thing I need between Erikson novels.    I would recommend this book.