Review: Great Original Character
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 2, 2012
I found lots of things to like about this book, a futuristic mystery with an eco-thriller angle, featuring a blind software guy who love blues and architecture.Douglas Abledan is the software expert, which in my experience makes him an unlikely hero.  Software guys rarely get to solve the mystery, usually being relegated to cyber-sidekick status.  Bennett's Abledan does use his computer knowledge on occasion but more often relies on the senses that he has left - smell and sound - heightened by his lack of sight.I love the concept of him as a blind witness and am intrigued by his tech devices - the sonic cane and Navigator.  This part reminds me a little of Auggie on Covert Affairs.  Abledan is on vacation in Chicago, ostensibly to listen to some blues, but he doesn't even get off the plane before the mystery begins and his senses are challenged.  A chance meeting with a woman scientist gives him a whiff of romance and ultimately murder.There is scholarship here as well, from ancient to modern history and a little science thrown in for good measure.  The corn plague he describes is totally plausible and he relates it back to indigenous people in long ago Mexico.  In more modern times he tells of the artifacts embedded in the base of the Chicago Tribune building.I would have liked a few more blues references but hey, there was a murder to solve.  I'll be adding the first book in the series Blind Traveler Down a Dark River to my TBR list.