The father-son team of Nelson and Alex DeMille launched the popular Scott Brodie/Maggie Taylor series with The Deserter and continued with Blood Lines. According to a reader note in the beginning of The Tin Man, Alex says his father first approached him about being his coauthor in 2017. Alex confesses that as a screenwriter (his films include My Nephew Emmett and The Absence) their first collaboration got off to “a bit of a rocky start,” since he was working in a medium that was unfamiliar to him. Fortunately, the duo found a rhythm and the first two books focusing on Army Criminal Investigation Agents Brodie and Taylor became bestsellers.
They began writing the third mystery in the series, The Tin Men, when Nelson, who had been receiving chemo for esophageal cancer, died at his Long Island home on September 17, 2024. Alex completed the book and dedicated it to his father. When it was published on October 28, 2025, The Tin Men landed on the New York Times bestseller list.
It’s always tricky when another author picks up a series made famous by another writer. But Alex learned from the best and The Tin Men should not be the last Brodie/Taylor entry in this series. The fast paced mystery has all the ingredients that made Nelson’s John Corey books so enjoyable. Brodie, like Corey, has a wry sense of humor, making adroit observations that get to the heart of a situation but also provoke much needed laughs.
Brodie and Taylor are taking a breather after working to head off disastrous situations in Venezuela and Berlin. Called into Brigadier General Stanley Dombroski’s office, the pair have no idea where they will be sent next. Answering Dombroski’s phone call Brodie jokes, “I look forward to our new assignment in an interesting and exotic locale.” The generals response, “prepare to be disappointed,” is an understatement.
At Camp Hayden, a remote Army outpost in the Mojave Desert, the U.S. Army has been conducting field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. “Killer robots,” Brodie sums up. Major Roger Ames of the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command was found dead, his skull crushed. While the army believes one of the so-called tin men – this one nicknamed Bucky, after Bucky Dent, the New York Yankee who sent his team to the World Series with a homer – killed the major, the death still needs to be investigated.
Since Camp Hayden has strict communication protocols, Scott and Maggie will have to surrender their phones when they arrive. After the major’s death, commanding officer, Brigadier General Christopher Morgan, has placed the camp on lockdown. Training and testing of the robots have been halted and all personnel confined to quarters. Scott quickly understands that while the robot was found with blood on its hands, in this case, metal hooks, a human may have been responsible for arranging Bucky to kill Major Ames. In other words, everyone at Camp Hayden is a suspect.
Before they leave for Camp Hayden, Maggie asks Scott, “At what point does machine intelligence have its own agency and its own moral culpability?” Turns out that observation will become the focus of their investigation.
Soon after their arrival, Scott and Maggie are shown some of the training videos, the robots against a Ranger team. The humans never stood a chance. The tin men are huge, over seven feet tall, fast, and agile, able to even climb buildings. The agents soon understand that these exercises are not to train the men, but to fine tune the robots themselves for battle against, who? Domestic enemies? Foreign ones?
Everyone tells Scott and Maggie that the robots cannot think for themselves. But watching some of the training tapes, Scott discerns that’s what’s happening. The computer program running the tin men has been altered, a program inserted that turns these lethal machines into thinking killers.
Robots that kill used to be relegated to sci-fi films like The Transformers. But people are now used to having mini robots in their homes in the form of personal assistants (Alexa), and vacuum cleaners (Roomba). Are seven-foot tall robots that kill far away?
The Tin Men
Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille
Top photo: Shutterstock Tilted Hat Productions
Our editors love to read and independently recommend these books. As an Amazon Affiliate, Woman Around Town may receive a small commission from the sale of any book. Thank you for supporting Woman Around Town.
