Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Coded Justice: A Thriller by Stacey Abrams

 

I was fortunate enough to receive via NetGalley a review copy of Coded Justice by Stacey Abrams (Doubleday, 15 July 2025), the third thriller from political leader and entrepreneur Stacey Abrams featuring lawyer Avery Keene. Keene is now working as a private investigator for a law firm that specializes in helping their clients identify their risk exposure, legal speak for finding their problems before the regulatory agencies do. Keene is tasked to investigate an accidental death in a highly touted health care artificial intelligence company that is poised to go public in a blaze of publicity and money.

Rafael Diaz has transformed his military experience and his concern for the subpar health care veterans receive into an innovative suite of technology tools to support both the veteran and the medical staff caring for them. A key feature is the ability to adjust for innate treatment biases involving race and gender, known issues in medical care. After deploying the system for trial use in a clinic in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the IPO paperwork is being finalized when a series of odd but dangerous errors in diagnoses and pharmaceuticals are identified along with a failure in the office HVAC system that results in the death of a key employee.

An interesting change from the legal settings of the earlier books, this one has an involved plot from both medical and technical perspectives. The unequal amounts of IT knowledge across readers required lengthy data dumps to ensure understanding of the issues at play. I found the story an absorbing mix of insider details on corporate start-ups, the VA health care system, and potential applications of artificial intelligence. It includes more than one swipe at the health records system in use by the military, electronic and otherwise, something I know about through my work.

I quickly realized “coded” in the title has more than one meaning. While it references software programming, it also means the differentiation of medical diagnosis and treatment based on race and gender. The patient is classified (coded) based on race and gender, and treatment decisions are based on that code. Then one of the engineers mentions code switching, changing behavior to match the social context of a situation. All three definitions apply here.

One error I noted which I hope will be corrected in the final release: Early in the book the AI system states someone has a hyperthyroid condition which is likely the cause of his recent weight gain. An overactive thyroid (hyper) causes weight loss, not weight gain. An underactive thyroid (hypo) causes weight gain.

A techno thriller rather than a legal thriller, Coded Justice makes a compelling case for the need to legislate and manage AI as well as the long-known need to improve medical care for veterans.

Starred review from Booklist.

 

·         Publisher: Doubleday

·         Publication date: July 15, 2025

·         Language: English

·         Print length: 432 pages

·         ISBN-10: 0385548346

·         ISBN-13: 978-0385548342

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3ImCLPt

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.