The Warden Review

The Warden
By Jon Richter

In The Warden, Jon Richter wraps a murder mystery with the COVID pandemic, artificial intelligence, and Machiavellian reasoning to create a delightfully horrific thriller.

In 2024, the UK residents of the Tower are sealed into their Innovation Corporation apartment building to protect them from the latest COVID variant. Their landlord is an AI named James, who uses spider-like robotic creatures to distribute provisions to the residents. Eugene is a former detective living in Towers, an agoraphobic who has settled into a precise routine but is jarred when he sees a dead man instead of his provisions one morning. 

The book also flashes back to 2020. Felicity Herring, an ambitious Innovation VP, is using her AI project named James to advance to the upper echelons of the corporation. These scenes are an effective tool for learning the backstory of James, and they provide an understanding on how Innovation’s business strategy played a key role in creating the Tower society.

Author Jon Richter uses a pandemic setting to create a disturbing setting that sets this mystery apart. The Warden provides a claustrophobic backdrop that draws the reader into its cloistered world. There’s a fine line between reality and perception in the Tower. Richter draws the reader into his disorienting experiment that makes it hard to put the book down. 

I was jarred when I first read the term COVID and wondered whether it was the right time to read a book set in the pandemic. I’m also claustrophobic and felt the weight of this stifling environment. Dystopian and horror fans will appreciate reading a compelling story set on the fringe of our pandemic society.  It’s not a comfortable book, and it’s not meant to be. 

The Warden isn’t a book to be slowly savored. It’s a book that demands your attention and keeps you in its claustrophobic grasp until the end.

Thank you, Blackthorn Book Tours, for providing me a copy of this book.