Review ~ "Speed of Light" by Lee Baker

Speed of Light by Lee Baker

Source: Received copy to review
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Genre: SF suspense

Book Description: Living the life of his dreams, and married to his longtime sweetheart, Pierce Black has been selected to be the first to pilot the Speed of Light plane. He is destined to make history like John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. Pierce’s idyllic world screeches to a halt when, three weeks before the historic flight, his wife is killed in a tragic car accident.

Determined to carry on with the groundbreaking flight in spite of his grief, Pierce is changed forever when, during the flight, his body is transformed into light. The shock of it all puts Pierce into a deep coma and when he wakes time is not relevant to his mind. Suddenly able to step into visions of the past, Pierce struggles to make sense of what he sees as he learns that his wife’s death was not an accident, but murder and her murderers are after him. 

As Pierce and the beautiful attorney, Vanessa Trace, sort through the bizarre attacks on Pierce and his vivid visions of the past, they cannot substantiate any evidence to his claims. In a frantic race to stay alive, Pierce and Vanessa find themselves matching wits with a conspiracy with seemingly endless resources and a police department convinced Pierce is a murderer, while at the same time they question whether or not Pierce himself is crazy.

Standing out from traditional suspense novels, Speed of Light is fast-paced, intelligent and intricately layered with mind expanding concepts

Whitney's Thoughts: Lee Baker’s author bio says that he is a screenwriter; his orientation toward motion pictures shows in this book. The book’s structure supports the story well, and the pace mostly goes at a good clip, advancing to a screamingly intense climax, complete with high-speed car chase and lots of broken glass. Pierce’s lightspeed flight has some very intriguing effects on him, which would be fun to watch in a movie. The science wasn’t particularly believable, and the characters weren’t particularly deep, but I would enjoy watching this book as a popcorn movie, with the action flying by too fast to care about the numerous thin spots. I also appreciated not having to wade through the bad language and sex scenes that generally befoul suspense/thriller books.

~Whitney~