Review: Disturbing in its Relevance
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 31, 2010
Wow. I came across this book on the Kindle boards and after reading the sample, I just had to finish it.The novel is a commentary on post-9/11 excesses, wrapped in a paranormal fantasy, tucked into a tale of romantic suspense. While written recently, the story is set in 2001-2002, shortly after the attacks.Mark Taylor, a typical nice guy and successful Chicago photographer, buys a vintage camera in a bazaar overseas and finds that it has a strange little quirk..it lets him see tragedies and disasters before they happen by mysteriously developing photos he didn't take at the end of any roll of film he shoots. He then dreams about the incident that night and has very little time the next day to try to stop what's about to happen.The story opens with Mark saving a baby who drowns in the bath because its mother is momentarily distracted. Mark rushes in, gives the baby CPR and saves the day. Instead of getting a medal from the city, he's arrested on the spot and tossed into jail as a terrorist. It seems that Mark saw the 9/11 attacks and tried to warn the government, but of course, no one listened.The other piece of bad luck for Mark is that he travelled to Afghanistan a couple of years before 9/11 with a Muslim friend to take pictures for a book. When the friend is tortured, he points to Mark as a co-conspirator and the FBI and CIA go after Mark.Due to his involvement in several incidents like the one with the baby, he drew the attention of a female Chicago PD detective, who at first thinks he's just a little strange, but later finds him to be sincere and very attractive; they begin dating only a month before his arrest. She didn't believe him about the camera (who would?) when he tells her about it after being taken into custody. She recoils in horror and disgust, wondering how she could have been so badly fooled.Mark is taken by the CIA to a Navy brig in SC, where he undergoes the most brutal (and unfortunately legal) forms of torture for over a year while they attempt to force him to reveal who was behind the attacks. This was really the scary part for me because I'm quite sure that this did happen to many innocent US Citizens: suddenly finding themselves trapped by the "Enemy Combatant" status that allows the government to imprision and torture someone with no trial, no contact with the outside world, no way to defend themselves. The author's description of waterboarding & other inhuman torture methods is chilling and all too believable.The hero is finally released through the intervention of others (no spoilers here), but not before his life is completely ruined and he finds himself on the streets, having lost everything he'd ever worked for, without as much as a "sorry, dude" from the very people who are supposed to keep innocent citizens safe.As much as the story revolves around these quasi-legal events, the author manages to treat them with the proper degree of detachment so that it doesn't come off preachy. This isn't the work of a conspiracy theorist or paranoid anti-government-crackpot. Most of the bad guys still manage to have a soul.I found the book to be enthralling and I couldn't wait to see whether or not this Good Samaritan makes it in the end or not (uh uh...I said no spoilers.) It was a poignant lesson in how easily we can lose everything and everyone we have based on the flimsiest of accusations.A gripping, well-written read that I enjoyed, despite the fact that I'm pretty firmly anti-romance. The story leans more toward the suspense end of the genre. It's neither smarmy nor saccharine. I would definitely like to read more from this author.