#BlogTour The Mind's Eye by Miles Hudson

 It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Mind's Eye by Miles Hudson.

About the Author

Notionally, I’m a school physics teacher. I’ve worked in a variety of schools in north-east England and started recently as the PGCE Physics tutor at Newcastle Uni. I also write a whole load of textbook materials for schools, my biggest titles being A Level Physics books for Edexcel exam board courses.

And I’m the inventor of the Best Fit Line Ruler. I ran a small business making and selling those but after ten years and 50,000 rulers, I’ve stopped making them.

I have a major passion for writing fiction. My future-set series of novels, starting with 2089, is about a gently post-apocalyptic, Orwellian future England. You could say ‘sci-fi’, but it’s not really lasers and spaceships; ‘dystopian’ catches the themes well.

I’ve also developed a great series of detective novels featuring the duo Penfold and DS Tony Milburn. Based in Durham City CID, DS Milburn and his civilian foil, the kiwi surfer, Penfold, solve cases that take in high stakes such as murder and big heists, but in a very cerebral way. Holmes and Watson for the 21st Century, if you will.

Follow @milesmhudson on Twitter, on Facebook, on Goodreads, Visit mileshudson.com, Buy The Mind's Eye

About the book

Everything anyone sees and hears is recorded and available to view online. Our eyes and ears are remotely wiretapped. There can be no secrets. But… what if the surveillance system had been hacked, and you weren’t actually committing the crimes people saw you committing? Jack Smith and Vicky Truva are on the run, again.

In 2089, Jack was banished to an island in the Bristol Channel for blowing up the old GCHQ building to destroy the surveillance computers. 18 months later, those responsible for his conviction suffer arson, assault and explosion. Eye witnesses attribute these crimes to Jack. The surveillance system is fixed, but he appears to be evading it. That should be impossible.

With his friend, Vicky, Jack returns from exile to try to prove that he is not the criminal. A militia posse, including Vicky’s brother, pursue them across climate-changed Gloucestershire. The surveillance system functions erratically. Can Jack and Vicky outrun the posse long enough to work out what’s wrong with it? And find out who really committed the crimes? And can they catch them?

Review

After being banished to an island for blowing up a building, is Jack the perfect patsy for someone looking to make trouble? Makes sense to pick a troublemaker, but is it just a ruse, a distraction technique or is there something more nefarious afoot?

How is Jack supposed to prove that he isn't committing crimes when he is being seen committing said crimes? When the surveillance system everyone trusts is giving clear information and yet Jack knows it isn't him. How do you prove it isn't you when the fail proof system says it is without a doubt - you.

It's a kind of dystopian deep state Big Brother techno thriller. A society immersed in technology, governed and influenced by it, watched by it. People who live in this dystopian future trust the technology implicitly - the question is whether they should?

This leads back to something our own era has sunken into, the deep fake and misinformation era. The way technology is used to drive false news, propaganda and misinformation. The way it is used to track and monitor. One can only imagine how it will evolve, but it isn't much of a stretch to imagine a future decimated by human fuelled climate change.

This is actually one of the more intriguing elements of the read, the way the author envisages the world if the predictions about climate change come true. How humanity learns to survive in an entirely different landscape and atmosphere with a high dependency on a reality created for us by AI and those at the tip of the technology iceberg. 

Buy The Mind's Eye at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : Penfold Books pub date 1 Feb. 2021. Buy at Amazon com.