He is suing Tidalwaiv, an AI company, on behalf of Brenda Randolph whose teenage daughter, Rebecca was killed by ex-boyfriend, Aaron Colton. Mickey, as certain as ever, states that an avatar called Wren from Tidalwaiv’s app Clair told Aaron to get rid of Rebecca for he would always have Wren. The avatar is lifelike in appearance and was modelled after the real life fictional Wren the Wrestler. Aaron spent several hours a day with his AI companion.
The company is vigorously defending the action and has buried Mickey in “twelve terabytes of discovery”. Mickey is overwhelmed but publicly stalwart.
After a pre-trial motion he is approached by Jack McEvoy who is a writer on technology. Long time readers of Connelly may remember him from earlier books - The Poet, The Scarecrow and Fair Warning. In The Proving Ground McEvoy, not Connelly, has written the books. It is a deft touch.
McEvoy volunteers to help with the case, especially with digesting the terabytes. He has grave concerns over AI.
Mickey has built a Faraday cage in his warehouse:
The cage was a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cube of chain link. Across the top was a crosshatch of wires supporting copper mesh that also draped down all four sides of the cage, preventing all manner of elecronic intrusion. Inside was 144 square feet of workspace. The cage was ground zero for Randolph v. Tidalwaiv.
Mickey or Lorna take home every night the hard drive to the computer inside the cage. There is no connection to the internet.
(I suspended disbelief for the book concerning the number of lawyers. No action with terabytes is going to be pursued by a single lawyer for the plaintiff and a pair of lawyers for the defendant. There would be significant teams on each side. There is just too much information to be processed. The American Department of Justice has had hundreds of staff, including dozens of lawyers, reviewing the millions of documents in the Jeffery Espstein files.)
The court action appears destined for trial. Mickey says Brenda wants a “Triple-A settlement of accountability, action and apology”. I have never had a “Triple-A settlement”. It is a rare lawyer that, working on a contingency fee, will go to trial for more than money - the most common means by which a court imposes accountability - because of the costs of a trial and a court in a tort action being unable to do more than money for accountability. It can neither force action nor apology.
Mickey is now in the civil world of law where he must prove his case, not just work on casting doubt on the prosecution’s evidence.
Getting evidence from stubborn opposition often requires multiple court applications for disclosure. It is hard to develop drama in recounting such applications. I can appreciate the drama of Connelly’s approach in wanting people to breach confidentiality by turning over information.
As an example, to my regret as a lawyer, Mickey seeks to have his former wife, Margaret “Maggie McFierce” MacPherson, now district attorney for Los Angeles give him access to Aaron Colton’s computer before his criminal case has been resolved because that is the right thing to do. He blithely wants her to breach multiple statutes, criminal procedure, legal ethics and privacy rights.
Abruptly, real life events intervene. The devastating Los Angeles fires of 2025 erupt. Maggie McFierce’s home in Altadena is in the midst of one of the fires and she, despite her position as DA, is denied access by the fire department.
Her home is destroyed. She stays with Mickey. To their surprise and my surprise their relationship is rekindled. Great losses can change attitudes.
As trial approaches the drama builds as does my concern about how the evidence is being assembled. Changing the rules of court makes a story easier to write. Following them would increase the drama as the parties and the judge wrestle on admissibility. I should have realized Connelly would deal with the issue. Mickey effectively finesses matters in court.
The most intriguing pre-trial legal question was whether the chatbot, Wren, can become a witness at trial. He spoke with Wren for hundreds of hours.
Not surprisingly, Tidalwaiv makes a generous offer to settle on the eve of trial.
Mickey has become righteous since becoming a non-criminal lawyer. He turns down personal injury and medical malpractice cases and will not even send on such cases for a referral fee:
I wanted something bigger, something more important, something that I could be proud of at the end of the day.
Having a righteous lawyer is dangerous for the client. The lawyer will not be realistic about risk which is a key factor in considering settlement offers. What is best for the clients is not always best for society but a lawyer is not representing society and the court’s judgment will not be based on what is best for society.
In the trial a detective testifies that Aaron walked up to Rebecca as she was getting out of a car at school, shot her once and walked away.
The evidence of the conversations between Wren and Aaron are startling and very disturbing.
The trial was compelling especially in the evidence on how chatbots are trained. The phrase “garbage in, garbage out” is emphasized. The biases of the coders are inevitably reflected in how the chatbot responds in communications.
The Eliza effect is always present:
“In short, it is people’s tendency to attribute human thoughts and emotions to machines.”
The ending of the trial is amazing both legally and factually.
The last witness was as dramatic a moment as I have experienced in reading a trial in a long time.
I was captured by the story and read swiftly. Connelly pounds the narrative. The Proving Ground is a return to the best of Michael Connelly. It will be a contender for the 2026 Best of Bill Fiction.
****
Connelly, Michael – (2000) - Void Moon; (2001) - A Darkness More than Night; (2001) - The Concrete Blonde (Third best fiction of 2001); (2002) - Blood Work (The Best); (2002) - City of Bones; (2003) - Lost Light; (2004) - The Narrows; (2005) - The Closers (Tied for 3rd best fiction of 2005); (2005) - The Lincoln Lawyer; (2007) - Echo Park; (2007) - The Overlook; (2008) - The Brass Verdict; (2009) – The Scarecrow; (2009) – Nine Dragons; (2011) - The Reversal; (2011) - The Fifth Witness; (2012) - The Drop; (2012) - Black Echo; (2012) - Harry Bosch: The First 20 Years; (2012) - The Black Box; (2014) - The Gods of Guilt; (2014) - The Bloody Flag Move is Sleazy and Unethical; (2015) - The Burning Room; (2015) - Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts; (2016) - The Crossing; (2016) - Lawyers and Police Shifting Sides; (2017) - The Wrong Side of Goodbye and A Famous Holograph Will; (2017) - Bosch - T.V. - Season One and Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch; (2018) - Two Kinds of Truth; (2019) - Dark Sacred Night and A Protest on Connelly's Use of Vigilante Justice; (2020) - The Night Fire; (2020) - Fair Warning; (2021) - The Law of Innocence and Writing a Credible Trial; (2022) - The Dark Hours; (2024) - Resurrection Walk; (2024) - Kim Stone and Harry Bosch; (2025) - The Waiting; (2025) - Nightshade
This really does sound excellent, Bill. And it addresses some very imporant questions about AI, as well as the responsibility that AI creators may (not) have. That's interesting about Mickey and Maggie, too. I can't say I'm shocked, given the plot point, but still.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciate your insights throughout the post. I'm not an expert in law, and it's always very helpful to get the perspective of someone who is when it comes to legal novels. For instance, I wouldn't think that a major case like this would have so few lawyers working on it; I'm glad you pointed that out. At any rate, I can see why this will probably be among your best of the year.