Happy People
The third Aris Thorne mystery
An automated system has disappeared. Its decisions have not.
When a disabled woman's benefits are terminated by an AI system that no longer exists, independent investigator Aris Thorne is asked to discover what happened. The software has been retired, the contractors have moved on, and the evidence has vanished. All that remains are reports, policies and reassuring explanations from people who can describe what the system was supposed to do, but not what it actually did.
The investigation leads Aris into a world where technology has quietly become part of everyday life. Most systems work well. Most people trust them. Most people simply get on with their lives. For the first time, Aris is forced to confront a possibility he has spent his career resisting: perhaps the greatest mystery is not why machines fail, but why people are willing to live with uncertainty.
As forgotten assumptions resurface across government, industry and history, Aris discovers that the pattern he has been chasing was never confined to technology. Machines inherit human ideas, human habits and human mistakes. The real archive has always been us.
Happy People is a mystery about trust, evidence and the stories societies tell themselves. It explores what happens after the investigation ends, when the records are gone, certainty is impossible, and people choose to carry on anyway.
What you'll find in this novel
- Artificial intelligence and public decision-making.
- Trust, evidence and institutional memory.
- The inheritance of ideas across generations.
- Returning characters whose stories continue to unfold.
- An exploration of what it means to live without certainty.
Read an extract
Read the opening chapter of Happy People.
Release date: Tuesday, 15 December 2026
Happy People will be available in paperback, hardback and ebook.
