I am venturing into the genre of speculative crime fiction with Thomas Mullen’s Blind Spots in a world where people can no longer see and the only way to have the life we used to with sight is to wear vidders. Technology that controls what we see, when an incident reveals that it can be manipulated to hide things, reality itself is questioned. Take a look at a more detailed plotline and then read on for my thoughts:
Blind Spots
By Thomas Mullen | Goodreads
A riveting crime novel with a speculative edge about the ways our perceptions of reality can be manipulated.
Seven years ago, everyone in the world went blind in a matter of months. Technology helped people adjust to the new normal, creating a device that approximates vision, downloading visual data directly to people’s brains. But what happens when someone finds a way to hack it and change what people see?
Homicide detective Mark Owens has been on the force since before The Blinding. When a scientist is murdered, and the only witness insists the killer was blacked out of her vision, Owens doesn’t believe her—until a similar murder happens in front of him. With suspects ranging from tech billionaires to anti-modernity cultists—and with the bodies piling up—Owens must conduct an investigation in which he can’t even trust his own eyes.
Thomas Mullen, the acclaimed author of Darktown and The Last Town on Earth, delivers an unputdownable crime novel about one man’s search for truth in a world of surveillance and disinformation that’s all too recognizable.
Content notes include mental health, gun violence, violence, death, murder, surveillance.
Blind Spots – Review
Blind Spots is a futuristic novel, set seven years after what is known as the Blinding, a time when everyone around the world loses their sight. While the government and scientists were trying to bring the economy back to operational levels by researching new technologies, people were in chaos and law enforcement was harder than ever. Now, that time is over and people, for the most part, have access to vidders that let them see again. The investigation into the time of past unrest has begun and the President has launched a campaign to look into the atrocities committed by the police in particular when the common people could not see.
The key with speculative genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror is that one has to dispel some belief to experience the world. We have to accept the world for what it is, whether it makes sense to us or not. Without much context for how far ahead into the future we are talking about and how many people survived a pandemic like that, I went through a bit of an adjustment period when I first started reading Blind Spots. I had so many questions and I wasn’t going to get answers just because. I had to keep reading, get to know the characters and figure out the world through their perspectives.
Written in four parts, Mark Owens in the protagonist Blind Spots. He is a detective, who has been on the force long enough to have been a cop during the Blinding. Losing sight took a lot from him, including his trust in the world and his wife. In the present time, it’s been a few years since his wife’s death and he has moved on to a causal relationship with a colleague. He does not want to think about the atrocities that were committed during the Blinding. Maintaining peace and order in times of food shortage and blindness had been mentally exhausting and something Owens is still reeling in. In his years of experience with perps, Owens has heard many stories that people use to get out of trouble. But when he himself witnesses a convict fleeing a scene of murder but his vision blurs out the figure, he starts to wonder if the tales he had heard had truth in them.
The pressures that a pandemic causes on government and law enforcement are expressed through the various players in the book – the Truth Commision, the attitude of cops towards it, the lawyers, the FEDs. Though Mark is the main character, there are some additional perspectives in the book. His girlfriend, Amira, and partner, Peterson, have their respective histories and opinions about the current state of the world. They have their suspicions about Mark, and maybe he is finally losing it. Their side of the narrative added a lot to the story for me. They helped me understand the world and the hard choices that people have had to face since the Blinding, and how people continue to live, trying to adjust to each other’s beliefs.
Once I got into the second part of the book, it was hard to put it down. Things were much bigger in magnitude than I had imagined. Thomas Muller artfully addressed questions like what introduction to a technology does to medical research. Should a cure for a human condition be found, how would that affect the economy, social structures and everyday life which relies on the technology the cure will render unnecessary? Can control once given, be taken back?
Blind Spots presents a complicated plot, developing the world in layers. There is the underbelly of the city where illegal activity is prevalent. There are criminal and political subplots that hint at a huge conspiracy and a threat to freedom and whatever little trust people have of the government and tech companies. The writing transported me into the book and I could feel the atmosphere of the police station through the narrative. The second part helps flesh a better picture of the world that used to be. Automatic cars and robots doing a lot of the work. Once the world started to come together better, I got hooked.
The rest of the book keeps up with the pace and tension, while further exposing the tensions on police and taking the characters to the outskirts of the city. There are religious and spiritual sentiments observed by certain parts of the population – people who have rejected the vidders and prefer to be blind. The community of blind people, the cult-like workshop of their reverend and the spiritual awakening that they are hoping for, the comfort level in doing without sight… It was surreal to read about and I truly marvelled and wondered at whether we could have such heightened abilities without the gift of sight and how we would function in communities.
Blind Spots was a roller coaster ride. With flawed characters that are haunted by the past and the present, it is a dark book that promised a big picture that blew my mind. Thomas Muller imagines a world where we rely on technology to function and how that benefits the technology companies and those who want to take advantage of our vulnerability. The leaps and bounds that one can accomplish if something falls in the wrong hands is analyzed through an intricate plot of suspicion, redacted people and unbelievable circumstances. I love the details that the author added to this book through the little flaws that escape the over-confidant.
Many thanks to St Martin’s Press for sending me a review copy of this book for an honest review. Blind Spots is now available in stores. Add it to your shelf on Goodreads.
Be First to Comment