This was a rare worthy read. The story has been done before, but this take on it was an unusual one in my experience. In 2001, Mark Taylor is in possession of an old still frame 35mm camera, and he discovers that it creates some images which he never pointed the camera at, and those pictures when developed, show acts of violence, death, and terrorism. That same night, he dreams of those images. This gets him into trouble, because on the morning of September 11th that year, he calls in a desperate plea to try and prevent tragedy and finds himself abducted to solitary confinement, interrogation and torture as an enemy non-combatant.
I hope our security services are better and smarter than the ones depicted here, because I had some issues with that, but eventually Mark is freed through lack of evidence, and is left to try and pick up the peices of his destroyed life. The crux comes when he starts using his camera again and finds that it has taken more pictures of yet another terrorist attack to come. The question is, does he dare report this one?
There was only one glaring writing issue that I picked up on, and I see this frequently: "The paramedic wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his uninjured bicep" No! Unless the paramedic - who sure as hell should know better - actually incised into the man's upper arm, selected one of the two bicep attachments that link the biceps muscle to the humerus, and wrapped the cuff around that, then he wrapped the cuff around the guys biceps! It's never used singularly except in an anatomical context. The biceps is the msucle that bulges when you flex your arm. The bicep is one of the two ligaments that attaches the biceps to the bone. Every writer should know this, but increasingly, I'm seeing many of them fail, thinking, I dunno, maybe thinkign biceps is the pural that applies to both upper arm muscles, so if you're talking about only one of them, it must be bicep? I dunno. I do know writing standards are falling, for sure.
That minor quibble aside, and in general terms, I liked how this was written, although there were parts I skimmed because it seemed that a particular motif, especially the interrogation, went on way too long. There were other bits I found uninteresting, but I liked the ending and overall I enjoyed the story, so I commend this as a worthy read. That said I am not into series and this is part of a series which I do not intend to pursue.
