Title: The Singularity Witness
Author: Dan Grant
Publisher: Mindscape Press, Inc.
Pages: 433
ISBN: 978-1732504011
Genre: Thriller
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Pacific Book Review
The worlds of science, ethics, law, morality, and loyalty, constantly battle for supremacy in Dan Grant’s intellectually stimulating thriller, The Singularity Witness. Multiple players juggle varying agendas and readers are never totally sure who really has the upper hand—and even when that appears temporarily discernable, one is never positive just how long it will last. This is a page-turner that not only makes readers hungry to know what’s going to happen next, it also keeps them wondering just how much of this tale is fiction and how much is harrowing fact.
Tom is a brilliant Princeton professor totally dedicated to his research into mapping human consciousness. In fact, he’s so committed that he’s totally ignored the first and, from the university’s point of view, most important rule of big time academia; publish or perish. Since he’s failed to do the former, the latter has kicked in and he’s literally being dumped. However, a representative from the private sector shows up and offers to take him and his research on with more funding and technical capabilities than Tom could ever have imagined. Sound too good to be true? It is. Before Tom knows it, he’s up to his cerebral cortex in muggings, thefts, murders, kidnappings, and various forms of particularly inhumane experimentation.
While Tom is the epicenter of this thoroughly engaging tale, a rogue’s roster of compelling characters round out the cast. There’s Tom’s sharp and shapely assistant who may be more than she appears to be. There’s a stone cold FBI agent who coerces his ex partner (and lover) into undercover work she’s not totally prepared for. There’s a US military man with mysterious associations who seems to be pulling the strings of various puppets. There are multiple assassins, eggheads, doctors, plus a totally amoral scientific genius whose evil knows no bounds. Oh, I almost forgot, there’s an apparently dipsomaniacal divorcee who’s decidedly lethal. In one way or another, they’re all involved in attempts to control an interactive map of human consciousness with the capability to read memories, potentially alter them, and exert a form of mind control that, in the wrong hands, could have catastrophic consequences.
While the end of the previous sentence may sound more like a plot involving Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, I assure you there is nothing Victorian about this novel. Author Grant has done an exceptional job of melding present day capabilities with just-around-the-corner possibilities. So much so, that you’re never completely sure which scientific experiments are actually being practiced and which are simply magnificent exercises in medical and technical jargon judo. The fact is, it really doesn’t matter. By the time you think you may have a layman’s understanding of the scientific complexities involved, you’re catapulted into the next high velocity fistfight, shootout, or chase sequence—all of which are executed with skill, suspense, and believability. Bottom line? This is one you won’t want to put down until all the loose ends are firmly knotted. Of course, like the best of writers, the author leaves you wanting more. Then leaves you with the enticing hint that there might indeed be more to come. Devilishly clever, and good, this is Dan Grant.
