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- Blind Traveler Down A Dark River
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- Author: Robert P. Bennett
- Reviewer: Judith Woolcock Colombo
- Publisher: PublishAmerica, Baltimore
- Format: Adult, Fiction, Paperback, 205 Pages, 2005, $19.95
- ISBN: 1413769993
- Rating: * * Quills
- Amazon.com
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- Natural disasters are part of the fabric of life. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and their aftereffects are events that we dread and hope never to experience personally. But imagine a future where these events are frequent occurrences. How would we deal with situations like what recently happened in New Orleans on a regular basis? In Robert Bennett's novel Blind Traveler Down a Dark River, set in year 2021, these types of situations have become all too frequent. Increasing global earthquakes have begun to destroy our civilization.
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- John Haggarty, the CEO of Unimat, is trying to stop this destruction. His company has developed pastel, a material stronger than steel and able to withstand the earthquakes. However, Unimat is under siege by both the environmentalists and the steel workers union. The environmentalists, the Children of Gaia, claim that technology is to blame for the earthquakes in the first place and want another solution to the problem. The steel workers want to keep their jobs. Someone hires a contract killer to eliminate Haggarty.
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- Douglas Abledan, blinded in a drive-by shooting, relies on his GPS unit to navigate the city. One day, his unit malfunctions and the information he receives through it is actually an account of the drive-by shooting of John Haggarty miles away from where Douglas really is. Douglas is rattled by this strange experience and expects to be run over by a car that isn't there and to bump into a building that is nowhere near his vicinity. He is puzzled by his experience, and it is not until the next morning when he hears about Haggarty's shooting on the radio that he realizes what his machine recorded. The authorities refuse to believe Douglas, so he launches his own investigation hoping to uncover the killer.
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- The story's premise is an excellent one, but the writing was at times stilted and the dialogue forced. The characters are underdeveloped and stereotyped. We have the blustering workaholic CEO with his neglected alcoholic wife, the bespectacled genius and the woman-chasing lesbian of dubious character. Abledan is more fleshed out than the other characters, but even he needs more development. We need to know more not only about his past before he became blind but also before he witnessed the murder. We gain bits and pieces of information but not enough to really know the man.
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- Despite this, the plot has merit, and the idea of a blind sleuth who is able to see the true facts is intriguing. Hopefully, when Robert Bennett brings his hero Abledan back in a sequel, he and his world will be more developed and real.
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