The Tech

 

The Tech- Mark Ravine

Dawn Hill Publications 

Release Date: February 3, 2020

Rating:

📚

Synopsis: Special Agent Alexandra Cassidy has made a career of disobeying orders, challenging

bigwigs, and asking uncomfortable questions.

What offends her superiors most is that her intolerable antics have earned her one of the best track records in the FBI.
 

It’s too bad, some cases are better left unsolved.

When Cassidy is transferred to the backwaters of Arizona she finds herself leading a crew
with so many black marks on their records, it’s a miracle any of them remain employed.
Thankfully, their first case pretty much solves itself. But as Cassidy and her team continue
throwing bad guys behind bars, a creeping sense of suspicion grows. The cases are easy, a
little too easy, and troubling patterns become impossible to ignore.
Then things take a violent turn, and an elusive figure steps forward to help. But in a
conspiracy big enough to topple kings, every player has an agenda—and misplaced trust will
have devastating consequences.

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Special Agent Alexandra Cassidy starts a new job in Arizona as head of a group of agents considered 'misfits' by other offices.  They instantly start closing cases in 24 hours or less.  Eventually, they start noticing that there are links between each seemingly separate case, and that there may be something much more sinister beneath the surface.

I don't like writing negative reviews.  I like supporting new authors, believe in constructive criticism, and I know my tastes are not universal.  So I'll start by saying that I've seen many positive reviews for The Tech online.  When Dawn Hill Publications asked me to review this book I thought the plot sounded interesting, the positive reviews made me more interested, and I was fully ready to like this book. The basic premise is an interesting twist on traditional FBI/police dramas: what if the tech guy, usually a third layer character at best, was instead really the one solving the cases and pointing the agents/officers in the right direction?  A good idea that could have gone places, and definitely could make an interesting TV series.

But the book didn't deliver on that promise for me.  At a massive 463 pages, The Tech never got off the ground and dragged the way through. None of the characters was more than a flat, one dimensional version of the stock characters we see on any given TV show. The attempt at a romance between the two main characters was neither needed nor any good, bogging down at teenage levels of a crush.  Most of the individual cases came about so fast, and often in questionable ways, that I sometimes had trouble following what were supposed to be complex ideas and ended up being such a tangle that I didn't care about them. I kept hoping the mysterious Cabal of bad guys pulling the strings would turn into something really deep and sinister, but that all got a bit over the top as well by the end.  

I had big problems with Mike, the "tech guy" who is supposed to be our hero. He's created an A.I. program called Aisha (think Tony Stark's Jarvis) and can hack into anything. He doesn't worry about things like warrants or privacy, and clearly needs to have the definition of creepy-stalking a co-worker explained to him (also, lying). Apparently he can do everything, then leads his adopted FBI team to find what he wants them to find with less-than-subtle manipulation. He has no problem planting faked evidence to get bad guys, or destroying evidence. The Tech could have become a fascinating debate about privacy versus public safety in a world where technology is expanding by quantum leaps every day. Do you have the right to expect privacy in a public elevator? In your office? Your apartment? Can the average citizen trust that anyone smart enough to develop this kind of tech is moral enough to use it for the good of the many? Is it ok to set up people with fake evidence when real evidence shows how evil they are? Moral debates never happen though, and any time one might start, Mike waves it away, assuring us that everything is ok.  After all, he's on our side.  Isn't he?

I believe that editing is where The Tech fell apart.  Ravine had a good idea and a really long story that could have been polished into something captivating with help and feedback from an editor.  Stilted text and dialogue could have been relaxed, repetitions could have been removed. Plot could have been streamlined and sharpened and the language Americanized (there's nothing wrong with British English, but if the characters and location are entirely American, the language should be too). Perhaps an editor could have helped encourage character development and some of the moral debates the use of technology in law enforcement calls for today.

Overall, The Tech was a debut novel with a good plot skeleton that needed some guidance and feedback to make it what it could have been a very interesting suspense story. 

I received a copy of this book from Dawn Hill Publications in exchange for an honest review