Review: One of the Most Thought-provoking Suspense Novels I've Read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 24, 2012
Gregory Vain has created a device that allows people to "watch"--in actual video--the last things the recently deceased had seen and heard. The device accesses the brain and somehow manages to convert the brain's memory into audio and video signals that people can watch. Of course, the implications for forensic science are astounding--what can be more unequivocal evidence than the actual memory of the victim?But that's only the beginning. Steve Hammond Kaye's `Thirty Four Minutes Dead' grabs you from the first page and won't let go--although, in truth, it's the other way around. It would be really hard to stop reading as page after page of this neo-gothic suspense thriller is a well-woven, mounting arpeggio of sex, violence, and horror.The prologue excellently sets the story's mood right--the tragic fate of one woman in the cold, calculating hands of a killer. Merely hours later, Gregory Vain promptly--if not masterfully--proceeds in using the Memory Camera Project to access the dead victim's last aural and visual impressions, enabling the investigators to solve the crime in a flourish.At once macabre and deeply, irresistibly intriguing, the book's premise involves an invention that can drastically change the world--or how the world is run. But that is the hope--as always, the sword of Damocles is double-edged, and the downside (calling it a "downside" is just an attempt at managing your rising fear) is of course, equally and massively dystopian. In fact, the Memory Camera Project's ramifications for all mankind are terrifying. The Memory Camera Project has great political and forensic implications, not to mention the myriad other applications that representatives from other fields of modern knowledge would eagerly find. And at the center of it all is Gregory Vain: charismatic, incredibly talented, quick witted, he is both the one who opens the proverbial Pandora's Box, and who happens to be the world's only hope in containing the implications of the Memory Camera project.I won't give away much, except that Thirty Four Minutes Dead is, without doubt, one of the most original, thought-provoking, and thoroughly enjoyable books I've read in recent years. It has all the right elements: suspense, romance, horror, and on top of that, it makes you question current research in neuroscience. Author Steve Hammond Kaye has accomplished something unforgettable here, and it would be more awesome if they make a movie or a TV series out of this.I give this book five stars!