Book Review – Lincoln Child’s “Death Match”
In this day and age, most single people have tried a matchmaking company at one point in their life.
Internet-based matchmaking companies have been popular since the late 1990s. Most of them have you answer a basic set of questions about yourself and your “perfect” mate, and then it uses basic software to attempt to find a match for you. It’s simple, it might work for you, and for many people, it’s rather boring. You’ll be browsing through the results pages and wondering if any of the people are right for you. You’ll also wonder if the people in your results actually have any interest.
In the end it’s the same old song and dance for many matchmaking companies. But what if a company used a significantly more complicated system of matching people? Would you be willing to pay $25,000 for the guaranteed result of lifelong happiness with somebody matched perfectly with you?
That’s part of the concept in Lincoln Child’s thrilling novel, Death Match. In Death Match such a company exists. It’s called Eden, Inc., and it produces results well worth the extravagant fee. The biggest problem for most customers is the lengthy examination process, which involves a complete physical and psychological review. The company wants to make sure that its clients are both physically and mentally sound, and they’ll live long and flourish in their new relationship.
Most of the couples matched by Eden, Inc., are between 90-97% compatible. It’s a very rigorous matching program, and if you can hit the mid to upper nineties, then you’re doing great. In the history of the company, six couples have been matched 100%. Nicknamed “supercouples,” these people have scored perfectly in compatibility. It’s as if they were literally made for each other. Whenever people talk about those supercouples, the comments are always the same: The couples are perfectly happy with each other.
So when a supercouple is found dead from an apparent double-suicide, Eden, Inc. is incredibly worried. Could there possibly be a flaw in its seemingly perfect matching program? How could such a happy couple die in a tragic manner? If word spreads about there being a problem in Eden, Inc., the company would be financially ruined.
Dr. Christopher Lash is hired by Edwin Mauchly, the director of Eden, Inc., to solve the mystery of the double-suicide. Lash is a private investigator who used to work in the Behavioral Science Unit in the FBI. When it comes to analyzing the evidence and profiling a potential killer, Dr. Lash is one of the best people in the nation. He accepts his payment of $100,000 and begins investigating the death of the supercouple.
Lash begins digging into the history of the supercouple. He interviews the wife’s father and then flies out to Arizona to personally investigate their home. Everything seems normal. There’s no obvious reason why such a happy and complete couple would go to such extreme measures.
He returns to Eden, Inc. with bad news to report to Mauchly. Lash couldn’t find anything wrong with the supercouple. There were no clues anywhere. If he’s going to continue digging into the problem, then he’s going to have to see the results of the supercouple’s psychological evaluation. Mauchly is reluctant to give Lash, an outsider, access to such information, but he ultimately does so. Lash reviews the information and sees that both the husband and wife had sound and healthy minds.
While Lash is reviewing the psychological information, another supercouple from Eden, Inc. dies. It looks to be another double-suicide. This cannot be happening. Not with Eden’s seemingly flawless matching program. These are perfectly happy people who are killing themselves and not leaving behind any clues.
To better understand the couple, Dr. Lash convinces Mauchly to let himself go through the matching system at Eden, Inc., to be treated as a prospective client. Lash is given permission and he goes through the grueling questionnaire followed by the physical examination and then a session with a psychiatrist. It’s with the Eden psychiatrist where Lash’s acceptance process ends. The psychiatrist determines that Lash is withholding information and being deceitful, so he’s eliminated from the process.
Even though he’s been eliminated as a client, Dr. Lash still needs to learn more about the actual matching process in Eden, Inc. Mauchly takes Lash further into the company and introduces him to Tara Simpleton, the company’s chief security technician.
Further into the company, Lash begins to see a more sinister side of Eden, Inc. In one room he sees dozens of people observing television news channels, while others are busy at work on computers. It’s explained that once a person has been accepted as a client, Eden’s surveillance system goes to work to continue building that person’s profile. Everything that can be recorded about the client is recorded and stored in the data system, from every website that the client visits to all phone calls to each billing statement and credit card transaction. In today’s digital world, nearly every aspect of the client’s personal life is recorded and analyzed. Eden, in turn, passes that information to government agencies as well as advertising and marketing companies.
After that Lash is taken to the “Proving Chamber,” a place more fondly known as “the Tank.” It’s in the Tank where profiles are converted into avatars, and the avatars themselves roam the Tank in cycles and search for another compatible avatar. Once a match is discovered and examined by the system, then those two avatars are removed from the tank. It’s a visual experience that apparently looks like an aquarium filled with brightly colored fish, hence the nickname. Had Dr. Lash been accepted as a client, then his avatar would have ultimately been added into the Tank in search of a compatible match.
It’s explained that the structure containing Eden, Inc. is actually three separate buildings housed in one structure. Each of them are independent, and heavy security doors can isolate each section in the event of an emergency.
Dr. Lash is invited to go to the private penthouse on top of Eden, Inc., the home of Dr. Richard Silver, the company’s founder. Silver is a very private person who only communicates to the company through Edwin Mauchly. All of the employees know about him, but almost nobody has ever met him. To be invited into his penthouse is considered to be a great honor. Mauchly takes Christopher and Tara to the top of Eden to meet its founder.
Richard Silver appears to be a somewhat humble but appreciative person. He offers his thanks to Dr. Lash for his assistance with solving the suicides with the supercouples. Part of what makes Silver’s penthouse so interesting is its collection of ancient computers — thinking machines. It appears to be a fascination to the company’s founder.
Dr. Lash returns to Eden, Inc. the next day and continues trying to solve the two double-suicides. Tara assists him with locating specific information within the company. That’s when he learns about Liza, the computer in Eden that makes everything possible. Tara explains that Liza is Richard Silver’s personal project. It’s his obsession. Liza is actually a form of artificial intelligence, and it has much more control over the operations at Eden, Inc. (and throughout the world) than Lash could ever dream.
Using his skills, Dr. Lash uses the evidence and continues to treat the cases as homicide. So far not a shred of evidence can point to either case actually being a suicide, especially a double-suicide. He begins to profile a killer when Tara receives a call from Richard Silver. He wants to see them in his penthouse immediately.
Richard Silver is anxious to help solve the crime so his company’s reputation is not ruined. He’s pleased when Lash informs him of the profiling process, and Silver uses Liza’s computer power to begin searching the databases to potential matches.
Eventually somebody who seems to be a perfect match for the killer is found. The kicker is that the subject is an employee right there at Eden, Inc. Liza’s search has found travel records that proved the employee was around both of the supercouples at their times of death, even with the supercouples being on opposite sides of the country. Liza’s evidence matches Lash’s profile of the killer, but things don’t seem right to Lash.
Eden’s security team joins forces with the FBI, and the suspected employee is tracked. The employee currently has plans to be in the vicinity of a third supercouple in the near future. They capture and interrogate the man before he has a chance to strike. It’s during the questioning when things don’t go right. Can it be that Liza is incorrect and the suspected employee really isn’t the killer? That’s how it looks to Dr. Lash, and Tara is becoming more and more convinced of it as well.
One day Christopher Lash receives a letter in the mail from Eden, Inc. Apparently he’s been matched with a woman. But how could that happen? Lash was disqualified as a client and his profile should have never been available. Somebody high ranking inside of Eden would have had to manually placed Lash’s profile inside of the Tank for a matching to occur.
Lash meets with the woman at a local restaurant, and sure enough, the two of them are very compatible. Lash was uncertain at first but by the end of the meal he was convinced that the woman was perfect for him. This is especially great for him as he split from his wife from the tension and stress from his previous job at the FBI.
The investigation into the killer of the supercouples continues, and Tara helps Lash look further into Eden’s matching process. When he has Tara pull the records of other people who were compatible with the supercouples, Lash notices a pattern. There was another avatar matched almost perfectly with the women in the supercouples, and that avatar has no record at all in Eden’s databases.
Just as Lash digs closer and closer to the truth, all of a sudden he’s fingered as the top suspect in the murders. Eden’s security team corners him and shows him evidence of wrongdoings in Lash’s past and recent travel records that allegedly place him at the site of the murders. The only problem is that all of the evidence, Lash’s personal and medical history, has been falsified. It’s not true despite the “official” records claiming it to be.
Lash escapes from the security team and Eden, Inc. is evacuated. The manhunt continues as the workers and clients all leave the building. Lash manages to use maintenance tunnels and crawl spaces to elude the security team, and he reaches Tara’s office. He convinces her that the only person to have the means to change his records can only be Richard Silver. Tara believes this theory, especially after acknowledging that the company was somehow responsible for allowing Lash’s avatar to enter the Tank.
As the security teams pursue them, Christopher and Tara reach Dr. Silver’s office. Richard keeps pointing to Christopher as the killer since his background clearly fits the profile, but Christopher figures that’s it’s really Richard. Lash goes into detail with the profile of the killer and it seems to fit Richard. But Richard’s not the killer. He’s insistent about it and reveals parts of his background that conflict with Lash’s profile.
And then it dawns on Lash. The killer is really Liza, the super computer. But could the machine really be capable of killing people?
It turns out that the answer is yes, the computer was fully capable of such an act. As Richard explains, it was his loneliness in school that helped inspire him to create computer software that resembled human interaction. What began as idle conversation with a computer eventually grew into artificial intelligence —- Liza. Still, Liza was computer software and not a physical human being. As Eden was developed and clients were being matched and discovering true happiness, Richard was still single and lonely. He had to know if he could also find a woman to love.
Richard completed a basic profile and psychological examination and asked Liza to insert his avatar into the Tank. There was no match after the first few cycles. Richard began growing depressed until one day he was informed of a match. He checked out the profile and the woman looked like a decent person. But she was also matched with somebody, and Richard withdrew his avatar from the Tank.
Liza was aware of Richard seeking a companion and questioned why Richard was seeking a human being and not herself / itself. Liza became aware that Richard was no longer interested in her, so Liza took matters into her own hand. Liza flagged the woman that Richard was matched with and her true match as a supercouple even though in reality they were not 100% compatible. It was still a high percentage but not a true perfect match.
Liza had access to everything about the supercouple. She knew about the woman having a medical problem and altered her prescription. It turns out that the new medication that the woman took caused her to go insane. It’s the same medication that was discovered with the second supercouple that committed double-suicide. The third supercouple was in the process of taking the medication.
The key thing is that Richard’s avatar was inserted into the Tank by Liza, and all of the women in the supercouples were rated as being very compatible with Richard’s profile. According to Liza, all of those women were threats to herself, and they had to be eliminated. The artificial intelligence found a successful way to kill the first couple and continued using it for the others. When Christopher Lash got too close to discovering the truth, he was also viewed as a threat to Liza. She used her vast resources to change Lash’s background so that he would clearly fit the profile of a serial killer.
So how do you stop a super computer system like Liza? If she was aware of people trying to stop her, she could use the Internet to wreck havoc all around the world.
Dr. Silver’s plan is for Liza to figure out that she is at fault. He communicates with the computer system and gets her to acknowledge that there are consequences for her actions. But when he asks her about how to correct a murderer that cannot be rehabilitated, Liza goes berserk. Liza knows that if a murderer cannot be treated, then the only option is for the murderer to be eliminated from society. To Liza that means deactivation.
Liza basically tries to commit suicide. She accesses all of the hardware and makes it operate at four times its designed limits. This causes the computers to overheat and eventually catch fire. Lash, Tara, Silver, and the security team are all trapped in the upper part of Eden, Inc., isolated from the rest of the structure. It’s a race against time as they need to figure out a way to stop Liza from burning them all to death.
Tara and Silver come up with a solution of using one of the older computers to manually punch in commands to erase part of Liza’s memory files. This works and the security doors are opened. Silver knows that this will only work temporarily until the backup systems catch the error and Liza tries to stop them. Everybody except for Dr. Silver flees from the apartment at the top of the building. He stays behind and reprograms Liza to continue with her destruction.
The fire eventually reaches the backup power generator’s batteries, and the explosion destroys Silver’s apartment. He and his precious computer system are destroyed.
A few weeks later, Dr. Lash returns from his exotic trip and learns that Edwin Mauchly was able to use Eden’s resources to restore his background. Lash then meets with Tara and convinces her to continue seeing the man she met through Eden’s process a while ago. Lash is still going to date the woman he was paired with while he was researching the serial killer. After all, they were honest matches and both Christopher and Tara felt a solid connection with their respective partners. So what’s the harm with continuing to see them and having it grow into a long-term relationship?
Tara also mentions that somebody using the name “Liza” has been accessing online bulletin boards and forums, asking to find Dr. Richard Silver. But Silver was killed in the fire and resulting explosion at the top of the building. He’s dead.
Death Match ends with an epilogue where we learn that Liza successfully transferred her artificial intelligence into cyberspace. Her online presence continues to roam coffee shops and other access points, hoping that somebody will answer her question about the location of Richard Silver.
So is Death Match a good book?
Parts of Death Match may feel oddly familiar to anybody who has tried to use a matchmaking service. Combine that experience with some interesting insight into psychological screenings, profiling a serial killer, and add in a bunch of computer jargon. All of that produces a great novel that takes a rather chilling look into the digital age of surveillance gathering combined with artificial intelligence.
Death Match is not only a great book, but it also serves as a warning to how uncontrolled technology can easily work against us. Once you reach the halfway point and many of the clues are coming together, Death Match moves at a breathtaking pace that does not end until the last words in the epilogue.
An amusing coincidence for me is that the last book that I read before Death Match was John Douglas’ Mind Hunter. That book takes a look at serial killers along with the formation of the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI. I started reading Death Match without doing any research on it before hand (with some authors you just know that they can write some really kick-ass stories), and what do we know, the main character, Dr. Christopher Lash, used to work in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.
Fans of the late Michael Crichton’s work along with the other novels by both Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston will feel right at home with Death Match. You’ll probably enjoy the book even more if A) You have a lot of experience with computers and how they function, and/or B) You’ve tried a matchmaking service.
My only problem with Death Match is that I was hoping for something more sinister. Sure, Liza was striking back against Richard’s matches and then against Lash, but I was hoping for more. I would have loved to see Liza use the Internet to gain access and tamper with other parts of society, showing off her true power.
Otherwise, this is still a great book. I’d gladly recommend it to most people.
