The Mocking Program

“High tech, murder, and intuition set the fast pace in a thriller” of a detective story set in a futuristic world from the New York Times–bestselling author (USA Today).

Located in the Namerican Southwest, the Montezuma Strip is the Western hemisphere’s largest concentration of industry, commerce, assemblage, cutting-edge technology—and trouble. So it’s no surprise to Insp. Angel Cardenas that there’s been yet another murder. What is surprising is the victim: an apparently well-off man with a clean ID. Well, two clean IDs . . .

Trying to nail down the man’s real identity takes Cardenas and his partner to a good side of town, where a woman—living as his wife —and her daughter reside. But that gets them nowhere, especially when they barely escape the high-tech security system that blows up the house and everything in it.

Relying on his intuit abilities, Cardenas learns that the woman was on the run from Katla’s father, a nasty felon with a long rap sheet. Going rogue, Cardenas follows their tracks from the gritty urban underworld of Quetzal to a lush primate paradise in Costa Rica. Because what twelve-year-old Katla knows—what she is—makes her the target of not just her father, but a host of others willing to kill to possess her . . .

“Bestseller Foster elevates this well-paced, hard-boiled SF police procedural through the use of a highly imaginative setting . . . The amazingly versatile author plays with a full deck of futuristic elements.” —Publishers Weekly

“Exciting, fast-paced, futuristic action.” —Science Fiction Chronicle