Smart building syndrome

Anthony Quinn enjoys the million dollar thriller by Philip Kerr; Gridiron by Philip Kerr Chatto & Windus, pounds 14.99

The idea is beautifully simple: imagine a building entirely controlled by a computer, then imagine what happens when the computer turns itself into a killing machine. That, in a high-concept nutshell, is the basis of Gridiron, Philip Kerr's sixth novel; it's also the book, the publicity note helpfully apprises us, "which has made its author a millionaire" (Hollywood, of course), and I'm afraid to report that the money has been justified to the last cent. Like all great ideas, it has been adapted from an earlier model. You could trace it back at least as far as Wilkie Collins's "The Story of a Terribly Strange Bed", but there is a more obvious (and rather less august) antecedent - hands up those who recall the early Eighties comic-strip "The 13th Floor", in which malefactors were dispatched to their fate by a computer-operated building. No?

Philip Kerr actually makes good use of comic-book techniques. He has a strong pictorial sense, writes plenty of sly, snappy dialogue and allows himself only broad strokes of characterization. Set in downtown LA a few years hence, Gridiron is both a futuristic thriller and a grim comedy of technological tyranny. Funded by a shadowy Chinese cartel, the Gridiron has been conceived as a "smart building": everything from room temperature to security is operated by a super-sophisticated computer. As the building awaits its opening day, a number of technical glitches in the computer become apparent. More alarming are the mysterious deaths of two of the building's employees. When one character remarks "I'm not sure I like the idea of a computer that takes the initiative", and someone else asks "How can a machine be alive?" you brace yourself for the worst, but since we still like villainy to have a human shape, Kerr has given us Ray Richardson, self-styled "architechnologist" and creator of the Gridiron whose professional arrogance is matched by his personal unpleasantness.

The fun begins when, on the eve of its opening, the building seals off its exits, thus trapping Richardson, his wife and a team of operatives. The phonelines go dead. As one death follows another, it gradually becomes clear to the team that the computer has taken on a malignant life of its own: Kerr has already tipped off the reader by giving the computer a "voice" in which it muses on the variety of "endlife" it has in store for the "humanplayer". The noose tightens predictably, but no less thrillingly. Characters keep on flouting the first law of hostile environments - don't go anywhere on your own - and the building keeps concocting ever more fiendish ways to pick them off. Poisonous gas, plummeting lifts, violent changes of temperature - even a trip to the loo can prove fatal.

Inevitably, one reads Gridiron with half an eye on what Hollywood will do to it. The tradition of vertiginous thrillers - The Towering Inferno and Die Hard - is a slim but bankable one, and Kerr has sensibly included a Bruce Willis-in-a dirty-vest action hero for everyone to root for. (At least I think this was the hero - he seemed to be the only character who didn't have a car phone and didn't drive a bullet-proof "Cadillac Protector"). One suspects that the author's more philosophical musings on the perils of technology and the complexities of the computer's sinister modus operandi might not make the producers' final cut. What's more, Kerr's warily ironic take on the vanity of architectural engineering and its disregard of the most basic human interaction - a hologram does the duty of a flesh-and- blood receptionist - will doubtless be reduced to a problem for the special- effects department to solve. Still, while it exists between plain old hard covers, this story of a terribly strange building has uncomfortable things to say not just about our fears of the future, but about ourselves.