Read this novel as part of my team's judging for SPSFC4 - Semifinals. Note that this review (and associated score) is my personal review and does not necessarily reflect how I judged the novel for SPSFC4 during Semifinals.

Some of the things I really enjoyed in this novel was the leveraging of current trends including AI and social media algorithms to reflect on our society as a whole, as well as the ways in which these can be manipulated by those with social, financial, and political power. This theme was poignant and an important reflection on our society at this time.

Set in a not-so-distant future, The Murder Algorithm is based on Los Angeles, in a future where social media has gone through an evolution of what we know today in 2025 to AI generated content, back to human-generated content, but in ways that leverage AI to continue to elevate those with greater privilege, although through the smokescreen of pretending that it is all solely user-generated fanbases. Strange murders have been happening in association with the largest social media platform of our not-so-distant future, StarSee, managed by a father son duo of egomaniacs, one of whom is considered the "tech brains" behind their platform. 

When our MC, Roman, gets framed for the murder of the platform's most prominent user, Starla Devine, our plot ensues, roping in Roman's closest community, colleagues, and some police detectives. 

While there were elements that I deeply enjoyed, there were also elements I didn't enjoy nearly as much, including the characters aside from the primary MC lacking depth, in my opinion, as well as there not being as much depth of emotion in characters as I would expect to see, for example:

when Roman's sister Roxy is murdered by crazed users of the social media platform, there are a few references to him reckoning with this, but overall, it seemed like he just kept pushing forward to redeem himself, which is not really in line with how deep grief works most of the time?

In all, for me this was a decent middle of the line novel that would be right for certain kinds of readers, but wasn't entirely my cup of tea. 

Note that I inflated this star score from my personal CAWPILE a bit, as I do want to boost indie writers and novels so that they can find the right audience.