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.

Joan Leotta Reviews: While Justice Sleeps: A Novel by Stacey Abrams

While Justice Sleeps: A Novel

by Stacy Abrams

Doubleday (May 11, 2021)

Hardcover : 384 pages, also available in Kindle, Paper, and on Audible

ISBN-10: 0385546572

ISBN-13: 978-0385546577 

 

Supreme Court Justice, Howard Wynn, lies “sleeping” in a coma. The first few pages set up the story, how he falls into the sleep, and give us background on his intrepid clerk, the protagonist Avery Keene, who has a family full of problems and no idea that the Justice is about to dump his decision-making power in all areas (health, finance, papers) on her instead of name his wife or son.

While I found the set-up pages a bit slow moving, once into the story, I realized that the complexity of the tale, needed that detail in order for our minds to follow the faster pace at which Abrams skillfully weaves together the tales of family perfidy, political perfidy, and international upset in the world of vaccines into a braid well-worth our time. Plus she adds just a dash or romance, the bow on the braid.

Abrams, while perhaps better known for her political prowess, and stunning non-fiction work on voting rights especially, is no stranger to fiction. Under the pen name, Selena Montgomery, she has written eight romantic suspense novels.

Considering the timeline involved with putting out a work of fiction with a major publisher, Abrams is also eerily prescient in giving us frighteningly realistic negative possibilities of a merger between an American and Indian genetics firm that supposedly is for curing a deadly genetic disease. Her depictions of an evil genius in the White House , willing to commit murder to achieve his aims is also terrifying. However having lived for more than thirty years in the DC playpen seen its workings up close and personal, I have to say, she has created realistic characters on all sides.

I would love to see Avery Keene apply her keen mind (pun intended) to other DC -based mysteries. Maybe a new series is in the works? While Justice Sleeps is an exceptionally good read and deserves five stars.

I was thrilled to have latched on to this book as my local librarian was setting it out.

Find it. Read it. It’s the first fiction she has published under her own name. The book is available on Kindle and at local bookstores. 

  

Joan Leotta ©2021 

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poetry, essays, cnf, short stories, and articles are widely published. Mysteries are favorite things to read..short and long..and to write.