bookrev: The Pixel Eye by Paul Levinson
Written by a New Yorker, in this day and age eyes and ears are everywhere
It’s obvious from reading this book (and a lot of Paul’s books) that he is a New Yorker. He describes the cityscape, sure, but he also details how Phil D’amato, his main character, feels about New York: the pride he takes in the skyscrapers, the way he knows the traffic and the subways, and what will get him faster where, and the particular city politics that is New York.
And from someone who has seen their city attacked, a novel about eyes and ears being everywhere, including the rodents that inhabit the city, isn’t paranoia, its just precautionary forward thinking. The explosions in the novel, though on a smaller scale that what we have witnessed, are strikingly real.
The book dives right in with a squirrels as spys theory, going through a high level scientific explanation of whether the hearing and sight of rodents could be mapped, recorded and replayed. The pace meanders somewhat in the beginning, but it seems to fit D’Amato’s character, as he meanders to put the pieces of the case he is solving together.
The ending, however, is wide open, with some conclusions reached, but no criminal apprehended. Maybe that is as it should be, depicting the war on terrorism as a battle that is hard to win, or even to determine if you are winning.
Another good D’Amato read.