Book review: B.C. author’s The Man Who Saw Seconds a delightful mash-up of thriller tropes

Article content

The Man Who Saw Seconds

Alexander Boldizar  |  Clash Books

$28.85 | 304pp.

If you created an imaginary backstory for an author of  thrillers, you would be hard put to come up with a narrative as wild as Alexander Boldizar’s.

The B.C.-based author of The Man Who Saw Seconds, according to his publisher, “ …was the first post-independence Slovak citizen to graduate with a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Since then, he has been an art gallery director in Bali, an attorney in San Francisco and Prague, a pseudo-geisha in Japan, a hermit in Tennessee, a paleontologist in the Sahara, a porter in the High Arctic, a police-abuse watchdog in New York City, an editor and art critic in Jakarta and Singapore, and a consultant on Wall Street.” He also suffered a brief and terrifying abduction of his child and was later trapped on the Amazon by COVID closures in 2020. This guy has had more adventures than Jack London!

Article content

The narrative conceit that drives The Man Who Saw Seconds is simple. His protagonist, Preble Jefferson, has been born with the ability to see five seconds into the future, a skill that makes him almost unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. The book’s action begins when Preble commits an error of judgment that results in a fracas with cops on board a New York subway, a melee that ends badly for the police and brings Preble and his wild talent to the attention of the forces of law and order, including the malevolent national security operative Bigman who sets out to capture or eliminate Preble before his talents bring down the international order.

Preble proves hard to capture or contain, and as the situation spins wildly out of control, the U.S. bombs Canada in an effort to eliminate the fugitive, and Bigman tries to use Preble’s love for his child, who may be in government custody, as leverage to force the father to surrender.

At one point the author creates a standoff between American and Russian leaders as they huddle in their war room bunkers, a scene that is reminiscent of the classic antiwar comedy Dr. Strangelove. Even absent the Terry Southern homage, this is a book of cinematic velocity and frequent, dark satiric impact. Think of it as a brilliant exercise in multi genre collage, a mash-up of some of the best elements of the thriller, the novel of ideas, anarchism, philosophy and quantum theory.

Article content

Highly recommended.

Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. His ability to foresee the future is almost non-existent. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at [email protected]

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber: For just $14 a month, you can get unlimited access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber: For just $14 a month, you can get unlimited access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.

Article content