The year is 4050, and there is a serial killer on the loose. The Family Guy—so called because he murders entire families—is such an elusive and dangerous criminal that the authorities decide the only way to capture him is to build a real-life synthetic investigator designed with the mind and memories of fictional Scotland Yard super-sleuth Miranda “Serial Killer” Miller. “I was a work of fiction, an alloy of various detective tropes,” the synthetic Miller quips about her early 21st-century namesake. “Or a shameless rip-off, depending on who you listened to.” Miranda is dispatched to Las Vegas, England (a facsimile of the American original that now serves as Europe’s party capital) to investigate the latest crime scene. To fit in better with the locals, she has been programed to speak exclusively in IngoLingo, a Clockwork Orange-like “gobspew street-English, spawned by the fads and whims of smin knowed as the Vox Popeye.” In Las Vegas, she teams up with Bogart Wham, the “Numero Uno Celeb Influsser in PopRep” (that’s the Popular Republic, the populist-capitalist federation that now occupies Europe and North America). Together, they will prove whether a detective assembled from middling novels can catch a very real serial killer. According to Chadwick’s inventive lore, Earth was plunged into a 1500-year Dark Age in the middle of the 21st century, and the newly revived civilization of 4050 therefore reveres American culture—and Donald Trump in particular—in the way that Renaissance thinkers revered the Romans; this is the reason “freddykrueger” and Family Guy remain coherent references. (Some still manage to feel dated, however: Common profanities include “zuck”—for Mark Zuckerberg—and “Trump in Stormy!”) Numerous Trump jokes aside—two countries in 4050 are modeled on his teachings, including one called Trumpia—the novel’s premise and its execution are quite brilliant. Readers will end the book hoping more Serial Killer Miller cases are in the works.