The first in the author's "Robot" series begins with a murder investigation. Earth has become so overpopulated that the surface is essentially one big city covered in steel. Our protagonist, Elijah bailey, is not a big fan of robots, but he is assigned one to be his partner in the investigation.Asimov's robots have been created with positronic brains programmed with three immutable laws: 1) A robot may not injure a human, nor, through inaction, allow a human to be harmed. 2) A robot must obey the commands of a human unless it violates the first law. 3) A robot must protect itself unless by doing so it would violate either of the first two laws.And yet, the evidence indicates that the murder may have been committed by a robot. Excellent sci-fi murder mystery. Read this before the other robot novels.