Blind Spots by Thomas Mullen

Published by Minotaur Books on April 4, 2023

Most of us depend on vision more than any other sense to perceive the world. As a character in Blind Spots explains, visual perceptions are often faulty. Eyewitness evidence in criminal prosecutions is among the least reliable forms of evidence because perceptions and memory are subject to error and bias. Blind Spots builds on that knowledge to imagine a world in which the questionable data we receive from our eyes gives way to a new form of “seeing” that is subject to manipulation.

Blind Spots imagines a near future in which everyone in the world lost their vision for a reason that scientists have not discovered. The disability spread like a pandemic. During a period known as The Blinding, chaos ensued. Scientists who had been working on a form of artificial vision developed an implant that allows a form of vision. How the implant works is a bit blurry (it purports to combine radar and GPS to transmit images to the brain) but the device (known as a vidder) also gives companies a chance to beam advertisements directly to the user’s consciousness. Naturally, the company that developed and markets vidders is making a fortune.

I’d rather be blind than forced to watch ads, and that’s a choice some people have made. Some of those people have joined a religion or cult called Inner Sight based on their rejection of vidders. Inner Sight encourages people to accept blindness as a means of stepping back from the “deceitful, materialist, immoral world.” A nefarious company is building on vidder technology to create an improved experience that allows users to change how their appearance is perceived. Okay, I might put up with advertising if a gadget can make women mistake me for George Clooney.

Before The Blinding, while he was a teen, Mark Owens visited a monastery for a couple of days. He was impressed by the stress relief associated with silence. When Owens removes his vidder and spends time with Inner Sight, he experiences a similar epiphany. Eyesight is wonderful but it might also cause the sighted to miss perceptions that come from other senses; the whistles of birds, the gentle caress of a breeze. Not to mention the ability to fight with sticks like the old blind guy on the television show Kung Fu. Thomas Mullen borrows the blind stick fighting for an action scene near the novel’s conclusion.

Owens is a cop. He was married to Jeannie. He’s been a mess since she killed herself. He blames himself for her death because he was less than a supportive husband. Some of his colleagues, including the one he’s sleeping with, wonder whether he might have killed Jeannie. Owens’ partner, Jimmy Peterson, seems to be the only person who will stand up for him. Owens is under investigation by the Truth Commission for wild and violent actions by people in positions of authority during The Blinding, but the investigation seems to be a pretext to cover up something more sinister. The plot involves a conspiracy that will be furthered by an assassination, presumably shielding conspirators from the light that the Truth Commission hopes to shine on their misdeeds.

Nobody believes Owens when he claims that crimes are being committed by people he only perceives as black blurs. Is a glitch in his vidder preventing him from identifying suspects or is he lying? Owens has little help as he works to answer the question and solve the novel’s several connected murders.

Futuristic cop fiction is a subgenre at the intersection of science fiction and crime fiction. Blind Spots is a bit weak on the science (The Blinding is never explained and the attempt to explain vidders is unconvincing, particularly when they start making holograms) but science aside, the story works as a crime novel. While the many-branched plot is a bit convoluted, it all comes together in the end. Owens is sympathetic in the traditional role of troubled cop under suspicion. Action scenes give the plot some pep. Despite a determined effort, Mullen falls a bit short of making a meaningful statement with the blindness theme, but Blind Spots does manage to tell an entertaining story.

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Darktown by Thomas Mullen

Published by Atria/37 INK on September 13, 2016

Darktown begins a few months after the first black police officers are sworn into the Atlanta Police Department. The key characters are a new black officer named Lucius Boggs and a new white officer named Dennis Rakestraw (Rake). Boggs is partnered with another black officer named Tommy Smith. Rake is partnered with Dunlow, an aging cop who prefers to beat black suspects rather than arrest them. Dunlow also encourages witnesses to lie and solicits bribes. Part of the novel involves the moral dilemma that Rake confronts as he decides whether justice includes finding the truth about crimes against black victims rather than blaming the crime on a convenient black suspect.

The primary plot thread concerns the murder of a black woman. Boggs and Smith last see her alive as she flees from a white man’s car. The white man is drunk and crashes into a light pole, but when they call white officers to investigate (because they have no authority to arrest or detain white suspects), Dunlow has a chummy conversation with the driver and lets him go. After the woman’s body is found, Boggs investigates her murder. Since he isn’t a detective, he places his job at risk by delving into a murder investigation, but the murder doesn’t seem to interest the white detectives. Whether justice will be done is the question that carries the novel.

Thomas Mullen has a nuanced view of his characters. The racists have their good moments and the victims of oppression have their bad moments. There is enough complexity in their personalities to make the primary characters realistic, rather than the stereotypes that novels set in a racist environment often become.

In the first half, the plot is just a frame for a larger story of racial injustice. The story’s background details stand as a reminder of how blatant racism endured in the south after the Second World War. Black officers entered the police station and the courthouse via a separate entrance, but they were headquartered in the basement of the black YMCA. They could not enter the courthouse wearing uniforms, but were required to change into their uniforms before testifying (and were assigned a broom closet for that purpose). Unlike white officers, they were not paid overtime for testifying.

The purpose of hiring black officers (at least from Boggs’ perspective) was to stop police brutality, but white officers continue to beat and kill black citizens. Yet the black community leaders (including Boggs’ father), eager for the new black officers to make waves in the department, don’t understand or appreciate what the new officers must endure every day if they want to keep their jobs — and their lives.

The first half might be a bit overdone, sacrificing pace for building a background. Fortunately, the story builds tension in the second half as Boggs and Rake pursue separate but converging investigations when they should be walking their beats. The crime is more complex than it first appears to be, which gives the story an extra shot of intrigue. The plot has the hallmarks of a classic noir mystery, making the novel an enjoyable read both for mystery fans and for readers who want to get a better sense of life in the segregated south shortly after World War II.

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