Quantum Reaction by Marc Wayne

Not that she believed QuantiPort had Installed protective iron spikes to guard their ramparts, but old habits died hard. Trusting someone else didn't come easy.

- Marc Wayne, Quantum Reaction

Angela works for C4U, a company that provides people who are blind with a live assistant, who remotely sees and hears what the client "sees" and hears through a set of goggles with microphone and speaker the client wears. One client, Claire, uses Angela to help her read books to her daughter, Lily. While working with the mother and daughter one evening, Angela witnesses the brutal murder of Claire by a red-headed assassin.

JT is the co-developer of a teleportation device, and his company QuantiPort is getting ready for their IPO. In college, he had introduced his long-time friend Claire to his friend and future business partner, Dave Benson, and they had fallen in love and started a family. As one of Angela's clients, he uses her service to help him read facial expressions of other people during business meetings. We meet JT right after he finds out that Claire was brutally murdered.

That same day, JT wore his C4U goggles during a meeting at his office while Angela talked to him from her home through the microphone in his ear. After the meeting, they were chatting and realized that they both knew Claire and began discussing the tragedy. Suddenly, Angela sees the red-headed murderer approaching JT. She tells him to run and helps him escape by telling him where to go and what to avoid.

Thus begins Angela and JT's hunt for who is behind the murder of Claire and attempted murder of JT, while trying to stay alive long enough to bring them to justice. There are too many suspects: the religious zealots protesting the new teleportation technology, the new security chief at QuantiPort who has connections with the local police, the venture capitalist who might want more than her share of the pie, competitive companies who want to steal the technology, the director of Claire and JT's foundation for blind children, or even JT's partner Dave.

This near-future mystery is filled with references to science fiction and science possibilities, making it fun for fans of Star Trek. Angela has a mysterious background that we only get to peak at, but that means she has hidden skills to combine with JT's technical background and ability to navigate in the dark. Together they make a good team, but being amateur detectives, they make mistakes, adding to the tension of the story.

I dove into this book, reading it in just a few days. The mystery was intriguing, but the story dragged a little about a third of the way in before picking up again. Since the action focuses on Angela and JT, we get to know the two of them well, but we only learn about the other characters through their filter. Focusing on just these two characters made the story seem a little claustrophobic, and I worried a lot about whether one or both were unreliable narrators, but that added to the suspense. The mystery is resolved and somewhat satisfactorily, but I felt the end of the book was a little abrupt. In the afterword, Wayne mentions the possibility of a sequel, and I would welcome one if it featured both Angela and JT, because I thought their unique talents made for an interesting crime-solving duo.