The Automatic Detective (A. Lee Martinez)

I checked this out on impulse - I saw it while waiting in line at the library for a different book - and I'm glad I did. It is unpretentious and a lot of fun. The hero is a giant android built for war who develops the "sentience glitch" and becomes self-aware, refusing his creator's orders to kill. The society where he lives is full of sentient machines as well as drones, those who strictly follow their programming, and they grant him probation. If he can avoid any problems for a limited period of time, he'll be granted citizenship. As the story opens, though, he gets embroiled in a drama involving a neighbor family that is kidnapped, and it brings him up against the police, the government, and an extra-governmental force that doesn't have humanity's best interests at heart. Of course, all comes out well in the end, but the ride is fun. There's no great literature here, but the writing is zesty and the story engaging.

The Assault (Harry Mulisch)

This is a powerful story of one small horror from WWII that destroyed a Dutch family and the ways it affected the one of them the rest of his life. One of the hated Nazi collaborators in a small town is shot to death on the street. His body initially fell in front of one house, and then the people living there drag it in front of their neighbor's house. As the neighbors debate what to do, and the hotheaded older son decides to go out and move the body again to protect the family, the Nazi police show up. They pull the family out of the house and set it afire. The younger son is only 12 at the time, and he is taken by the Germans to a prison cell, then turned over to his uncle in Amsterdam to live out the rest of the war. He puts the events of that night out of his mind, and only gradually over the years pieces together what really happened. As moving and affecting as the story is, it didn't grab me. Because the main character works so hard to wall off his feelings for his family's catastrophe, the book felt distant. I was unable to get inside him and feel anything much for his struggle, because he didn't allow himself to feel anything much himself. Thus I was disappointed, and can't give the book the wholehearted endorsement I otherwise would.

How We Decide (Jonah Lehrer)

The author gives us a suitably complex and nuanced description of the mental processes involved in making decisions about everything from what to eat for breakfast to whether to shoot down an incoming object that might be a friendly pilot or an enemy missile. The basic message is that our brains have two separate but interconnected decision-making systems. The rational system, housed primarily in our oversized, relatively modern frontal lobes, is great at weighing the odds and calculating probabilities. The emotional system, mostly in the lower levels of the brain and honed by millions of years of evolution, is great at making snap decisions about a wealth of fuzzy information. To make the best decisions, we need to know how these two systems operate, how to help them operate most effectively, and  when to turn over control to which system. The examples are numerous and fascinating, and the writing is clear and accessible. Highly recommended for anyone who makes decisions and would like to make them better.

Suspect (Michael Robotham)

There is a lot that's good in this mystery thriller, especially for a first novel. The protagonist is competent but flawed and has to overcome a devious plot to save himself and his family. The tension keeps climbing, and I was always wondering what was coming next. I did have some problems with it though. <SPOILERS!> For someone so smart, he could be frustratingly stupid. He is on the run from the police who suspect him of one murder when he goes to a friend's house and finds the friend murdered. Does he immediately notify the police, when there are people who can testify that he just left them and didn't have time to commit the crime? No, of course not. He wanders all over the crime scene, poking his fingers into things, leaving his traces everywhere, and then runs. But then at the end, despite a disability that keeps locking up his leg, he runs a quarter mile to the next crime scene, beating the police there. Really? So although I did enjoy the book and can recommend it, there was some mighty strenuous suspension of disbelief required.