Lou Gilmond, author of Palisade, his heart-pounding new thriller, on tackling AI, surveillance and conspiracy in his crime fiction.
Apparently, even our air fryers are spying on us now. At least that was the conclusion one national consumer group came to this month, but it didn’t come as a surprise. I’ve long been fascinated by the question of whether our technology is listening to us, watching us or tracking us. And the answer, generally is yes, because that is what they were designed to do.
Phones, smart speakers, cars, dishwashers, watches, lap-tops, television remote controls, doorbells… the list of devices that we might encounter throughout our day, with ‘smart’ tech enabled, is enormous and growing rapidly. There are now so many internet-connected things in common usage, that even if you wanted to, you often can’t avoid being within their radius. Not unless you want to live in a technology free house and never go out.
As an author of crime thrillers, that sense of being watched, followed or tracked at all times is something that I find always seeps onto the page. Combine that unsettled feeling of being watched with a hunch that a corrupt government might be the one doing the watching and you have a political thriller. Combine it with a notion that a modern-day AI is the one doing the watching and the listening – an AI with face and voice recognition capabilities – and you have a AI thriller. Combine both of those two concerns – a government using an AI with face and voice recognition capabilities to spy on its citizens – and you have a political, AI, conspiracy-theory-based thriller. In that way, Dirty Geese, Palisade, and Divinity Games the first three Kanha and Colbey thrillers were born. They are each standalone novels, with two out-of-their-depth MPs battling to safe democracy as the main protagonists, but they each handle a different aspect of technological tracking.
The first, Dirty Geese, looks at how tech companies are starting to join up the dots, combining forces until they know everything about us: What makes us laugh, cry. Who are friends are, or who we pretend our friends are. Whether we lie on video calls, and when we do, what tells we display with our body language. Where we go as a routine, how often we step outside that routine. Who our phones connect with. Secret lovers might think the world doesn’t know about their liaisons, but if their phones are together in the same hotel room, someone somewhere knows.
The next of the thrillers, Palisade, looks at what happens when those who have access to all that knowledge about us start to put it to evil use. What happens when a tech company with access to all that knowledge starts to collude with a political party? Readers have called it terrifying. And I don’t think they mean the twists and turns of the novel, of which there are many, I think they are referring to the fact that it is such a plausible future, that the books paint. It seems only too real and terrifyingly close.
It took me seven years to write the first of the Kanha and Colbey thrillers, Dirty Geese, and along the way I extensively researched as much nascent surveillance technology as I could find. Smart glasses that could analyse what the viewer was seeing and merge the real world with the virtual, new techniques to track us as we browse across the internet, children’s toys that capture digital voice recordings and send them back to the manufacturer’s HQ.
At the time I started writing these thrillers, deep-fake was little-heard-of, just an astounding rumour about faked videos built up from stolen images that could be so realistic no-one could tell if they were real or not.
By the time that book was finished and being pitched out to agents in 2022, quite a bit of the future technology in it had already arrived into the public’s consciousness, and by the time I started writing Palisade, the next Kanha and Colbey adventure, a lot of it was on the market and in common use. Ray-Ban and Meta had joined forces to sell smart glasses that could record what the viewer saw, deep-fake tools were widely available on the dark web and it was getting hard not to spot that different tech companies were starting to share information about us.
Have you ever mentioned something in front of smart listening tech and then had an advertisement for whatever it was served up on a completely different platform? Yes, it’s a spooky moment that many of us have shared. The world really is watching, listening and tracking. But what can one do about it?
Before I started writing, I had a long career in a role that involved reading legislation and then lobbying law makers and regulators: MPs, ministers and civil servants. I couldn’t help thinking, how does the government feel about these developments in technology? Are they doing anything to stop the devices we use every day from invading our privacy? Or… the thriller writer in me asks… are they encouraging it because it will make their job of policing the populace easier?
Later on, I discovered that there are some fantastic privacy champions out there, including campaigners, MPs and members of the House of Lords, who regularly try to raise bills to protect us, but I’m a fiction writer, so I needed to stay in the realms of fiction.
And so my two MP protagonists were born: Esme Kanha, a feisty and ambitious chief whip, and Harry Colbey, a good-hearted, but ready to retire, bankbencher. In Palisade, they are in opposition when they stumble upon a conspiracy between a big tech organisation and a corrupt senior minister.
It starts, of course, with a murder. In this case, one made to look like an accidental death. A top journalist who has crashed his car into a ravine. Esme Kanha isn’t convinced that the journalist’s death was accidental and Harry Colbey is inclined to agree. The journalist’s widow has given Kanha a list, but what it is a list of, she can’t fathom. As they investigate, they get closer to the truth. But, the closer they get, the more danger they face. And in a world where what can see watches, what can hear listens and what can be followed is tracked, the two MPs have to tread very carefully.
(c) Lou Gilmond
About Palisade by Lou Gilmond:
When Chief Whip Esme Kanha is handed a secret dossier containing evidence of government corruption, she suspects its original owner, a top journalist, was murdered for gathering it. Despite the danger, she feels she must investigate. Meanwhile, lowly backbencher Harry Colbey is working his own leads. A known campaigner against big tech, he is often sent data from anonymous sources and this time round he has something truly alarming.
But both Colbey and Kanha must tread carefully in a world dominated by AI, where ‘what can see watches, what can hear listens, and what can be followed is tracked’. As Kanha and Colbey again join forces, they are locked into a deadly race against political corruption, no matter what the cost. But when an old enemy returns, it may already be too late…
Palisade is the second book in the series but can be read as a standalone book. The third book, which can also be read as a standalone, will be published on 10th April 2025.
Lou Gilmond dives into the world of government corruption, AI and big tech in a captivating approach that hooks you from the start and leaves you craving more.
Perfect for fans of Robert Peston, Peter Hanington, Sarah Vaughan and Stella Rimington.
Order your copy of Palisade by Lou Gimond from any good bookstore or online here.
