The Machine Murders: Island Buoys

A series of murders in the party island of Mykonos rocks the Web.

A data scientist has less than a week to become a cop.

Manos Manu arrives on the Greek island of Mykonos to attend a friend’s luxurious wedding, but soon finds himself on the hunt for a serial killer. The murderer abducts his victims, runs their body through with chains and sinks them offshore attached to a buoy scrawled with the word "FREE".

Local police find plenty of clues: boat rentals and hotel reservations, DNA samples and last sightings. But when the murders start making the rounds of social media, they’re in over their head.

Enter Manu, a data scientist who gave up lucrative Silicon Valley for Interpol only so he could freely "run multiple models on human actors". His problem now? Every move he makes is met with suspicion: his wealthy friends question his career in law enforcement, and the Greek police are baffled by his methods. His machine learning system tracks online media use to find killers, but it’s untested. He needs datasets, but they’re classified. And Interpol headquarters in Singapore don’t like him squandering resources or - much worse - exposing the entire program to the scrutiny of global media.

But the victims multiply. The crisis deepens. And Manu’s machine learning models plunge them into data correlations impossible to fathom.

For more information about the book and its author, visit www.themachinemurders.com.