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.
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