Charles Saphro 38 min read

No electronic witchery of the 21st century can pin guilt on smooth philanthropist Lonnie Raichi and his unbeatable 'triple ethic', but the cop Jason sweats to find the rule that will break him.

Charles Saphro's 1959 story is a clever social-SF crime tale. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for an inventive future-cop story where a criminal's airtight philosophy defies every technological means of detection, and a dogged lawman hunts the logical flaw that will crack it, in a well-turned golden-age piece of cat-and-mouse and clever ideas.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

38 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).