THE MAN WHO SAW SECONDS, pacey thriller with fun premise

THE MAN WHO SAW SECONDS
ALEXANDER BOLDIZAR
CLASH Books(non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet—causing another man to die in his place. Government agencies become aware of Preble's gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military R&D.

Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.

A breathless thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Alexander Boldizar provides an adrenaline-pumping read that will leave you contemplating love, fear and the abyss.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Aptly marketed as a thriller...unusually richly endowed with the more interesting musings on the nature of freedom, the cost of being different, the responsibility to use one's gifts but the acceptance that the gifts have limitations...you get the idea.

The oddest sensation for me as I read this novel was the way it seemed to me to use the form of "thriller novel" to describe the very story he was telling; that is to say, his thrilling idea for a chase story has a core of examining what makes a story thrilling with its use of precognition. Author Boldizar, a Slovak national, knows the apparatus of oppression from the inside. He brings his idea of the abuse of the individual at the hands of government apparatus to the fore here. I myownself see it as a lot more likely that it would be Goldman Sachs or that fuck Zuck's Meta pursuing this dude to use his abilities to make them more money, but we are all as History has made us. (Paraphrasing Judge Dee, from Dee Goong An, feels...weirdly apt in this book's review.)

The other fascinating quality this predictive thriller has is that it plays with a known bit of science that's been studied for a long time: Our brains are pattern-spotting prediction machines. Evolution has made them that way so we can extrapolate from facts...red fruits are sweeter; fruits are red when it's cold; it's going to be cold soon so better get back to those trees before THEY get there...to take actions that help us survive. We've blown past that helpful stage long since. Now we're using that extrapolation /prediction feature to create horrors of exploitive and extractive excesses.

I digress, but only slightly.

What happens as a result of an ill-timed, badly handled cop confrontation is simple: Preble Jefferson lands on the radar of people he's spent his adult life avoiding being noticed by. He's made solid, profitable use of his limited gift of "precognition" (in quotes because it's not actually presented as paranormal in origin so isn't within classic definitions of the term) and now it's time to get exploited. Not if he can help it, he thinks, and the chase is on.

The chase is well constructed, the stakes clear and relatable. I am a fan of thrillers, starting back with The Thirty-Nine Steps, because they utilize the fight-or-flight response to create engagement and investment in their chosen story. Who among us, if pursued, doesn't immediately want to run? And one would think a guy who can see a few seconds into the future would have a huge edge on pursuers. Only of the pursuers don't know about his ability...or its funny little quirk of not working when he gets worked up. So now we're triggering the fight part of the response. Does Our Hero have a fight response? Not really. But threaten a father's belovèd child and see how that goes....

It's a really well-made story that uses the factual human brain predictive skill we see in the elite athletes of the exploitive "sports" industry, only turned up to eleven.

Why only four stars? Because I do not for one second buy that this guy's power would enable him to do the things he's shown doing. It's like my response to superhero stuff (see my joyous warble for the excellent Hench for that): Did you really think this through, Author Boldizar? Do you think this is really what would happen? Starting from the wrong villains (the NSA is a lot less scary than Google/Sundar Pichai or Meta/That Fuck Zuck) I wasn't ever likely to get to a fifth star. I was amused by Our Hero's name, "Jefferson," as evoking that least decent of the Founders gets my quirked eyebrow. (Also the Jeffersonian vision of an agrarian republic repels me.) The funny sidekick Fish the lawyer, evoking my favorite lawyer character Douglas Wambaugh from Picket Fences days, so points added there; and Our Hero being such a solidly loving, involved dad got my approving smiles. Pacing, actual science used albeit unrealistically, guaranteed four stars, but no more could be added.

A four-star entertaining story, with meaty thoughts behind it, is still a big win in my book.