Only Chance of Living
The Pixel Eye (Dr Phil D’Amato, volume 3)
By Paul Levinson
24 Dec, 2024
What's The Worst That Could Happen?
2003’s The Pixel Eye is probably the third book in Paul Levinson’s Dr Phil D’Amato SF mystery series (although some sources claim it is the fifth).
America is about to pay the price for its excess of civil liberties and due process. The police may pursue criminals, the intelligence agencies chase conventional spies, but who exactly is keeping an eye on the greatest menace to America? I speak, of course, of
SQUIRRELS.
As it turns out, Dr. Phil D’Amato, forensic examiner. New York City has a minor squirrel mystery into which D’Amato is drawn. Squirrel populations are falling. Some dead squirrels appear to have been drugged. What’s up?
D’Amato isn’t too concerned. After all, a previous case involving missing cats turned out to be due to Chinese restaurants sourcing alternate chicken1. D’Amato should be concerned because the missing and dead squirrels are the tip of a shark-infested iceberg of existential threat to America.
A twisty path of evidence thanks to a soon-to-be-dead friend (who probably should have owed less money to the mob than he did) leads D’Amato to the Cerebreeze Laboratory. Among Cerebreeze’s accomplishments, snagging sound records out of animal brains. Anyone with access to this research could turn any animal into a living bug.
That alone would be disturbing. A far worse development reveals itself when D’Amato’s spook friend Frank Catania is killed by an explosion of unusual origin. Someone has worked out how to create an explosive out of the nitrogen in living tissue. Animals — squirrels — so transformed remain healthy until the moment of detonation, which is fatal to the animal and whoever is nearby. Any squirrel could be a spy and any squirrel could be a suicide bomber involuntarily2 working for the legions of terrorists from whom America’s misguided dedication to due process cannot protect the nation.
Someone who commanded weaponized squirrels could target, for example, Secretary for Homeland Defense Machem and there would be very little anyone could do about it. Or so it seems. Machem has been targeted for squirrel-based murder, but he will not be as easy a target as the conspirators expect.
America has defenses for which its enemies domestic and foreign are utterly unprepared: shadowy security organizations operating outside civilian oversight.
~oOo~
This novel taught me a very important lesson, which is that if I want to write a hilariously (at least to me) scathing review of a terrible novel, I might want first to find out if the author is a good friend of someone higher up the food chain. If they are, best to use cautious terminology like “problematic” and “implausible” rather than “this is less of a vaguely SFnal police procedural than it is a cry for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder,” or “This was an intensely stupid book.”
As I don’t work for Bookspan anymore, let me begin by saying that this intensely stupid book is less of a vaguely SFnal police procedural than it is a cry for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The novel appears to have been written after 9/11, at a time when New Yorkers and other Americans had been traumatized3 by an unexpected, massive attack. Americans decided only extreme measures could protect them from THEM. The Pixel Eye shares a world view with the TV show 24 and that’s not a coincidence. It reflects the post‑9/11 zeitgeist.
Not that SF is a stranger to dubious worldbuilding, but even if squirrels are more tractable than personal experience and the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior (that under precisely controlled conditions, animals do whatever the hell they feel like doing) suggest… there just isn’t a lot of mass in a squirrel from which to create explosives, particularly if the squirrel has to remain alive after conversion. What’s worse for this conceit is that the bombs seem to be brain-based and a squirrel brain weighs about as much as a firecracker. If the squirrel bomb is to work, one would have to assume some direct conversion of mass to energy. And if you could do that, why settle for doing it to squirrel brains?
This isn’t the only thing wrong with the book. The reader will also encounter paper-thin characterizations, a rambling incoherent plot, a central investigator lucky enough to run into people who can explain what’s going on, and a world that has comprehensively abandoned any pretext of rule by law.
Most of the reviews I’ve seen of The Pixel Eye are more favorable than mine. Well, it’s probably hard to be more negative than “intensely stupid book is less of a vaguely SFnal police procedural than it is a cry for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.” Still, the novel was nominated for a Prometheus Award4, despite being antithetical to libertarianism in pretty much every conceivable way, so someone clearly liked the novel.
I recommend The Pixel Eye to would be authors. Study this book closely, so you know what not to do.
The Pixel Eye is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), and here (Words Worth Books).
I did not find The Pixel Eye at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Chapters-Indigo, which isn’t surprising because I also didn’t find it at MacMillan, the original publisher. I see there was a 2014 edition from JoSara MeDia, but as their site returns “Error establishing a database connection” I am guessing that edition is out of print as well.
1: Not hyperbole. To quote:
But I also recalled the time way back in the 1980s when cats started disappearing on the west side of the Hudson. A Chinese restaurant in need of a free supply of “chicken” turned out to be the culprit.
2: I assume the squirrels don’t want to be blown up. I confess I am not up on squirrel political extremism, with the exception of my squirrel nemesis.
No photo because I am always too busy not getting bitten.
3: The rule of thumb was that the further an SF author was from New York, the more outraged they were by 9/11. As this novel proves, that’s only a generalization, not a law.
4: Finishing dead last after Sims by F. Paul Wilson, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling, Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind, and Spin State by Chris Moriarty. It just barely edged Tom Kratman’s A State of Disobedience off the ballot.