Assessment:
Plot: In this wholly engaging, quasi-post-apocalyptic mystery/thriller, after surviving a bloody pandemic, journalist Rags Goldner and her partner Flint decide to leave the big city for small-town life in the struggling Canary. However, what Rags discovers about Canary is a network of secrets and conspiracies--including the largest of all, about what truths lie behind the disappearance of teenagers in both the small town and across the country.
Prose: Bernstein's prose is engaging, entertaining, and hooks the reader almost immediately with a desire to know more about the eerie and disturbing (even by a post-pandemic metric) of Canary. Overall, a very well-told story that unfolds to the beat of thoughtful, plot-driven prose that rarely veers off track and keeps the reader wanting more.
Originality: Post pandemic and set in the near future (2030), Bernstein's world is just high-tech enough to be novel, yet still retains many of the disturbing (real life) threads of a society living on the edge of paranoia, uncertainty, and fear--aided and abetted by petty despots trying to seize power over an unwitting and apathetic public traumatized by a devastating global tragedy.
Character/Execution: Rags, as the central character, is given the most attention, although her primary purpose is quickly established as a woman hell-bent on finding the truth--both for herself, and for the larger "story" (a very hungry journalist trope). Overall, the townspeople (miserable Merry, downtrodden Piers, Rags's partner Flint, mysterious artist Louisa, et al.) are well-portrayed, even as they ultimately serve as set dressing to aid Rags in her quest for finding answers.
Date Submitted: May 05, 2022
“Bernstein sets us in a post-pandemic time just the barest bit beyond our own, on the way to a dystopia that feels too frightening and too familiar. A thoughtful, complex, well-executed novel—not a who-done-it? but a much scarier what-in-the-hell-is-happening?”
--Robert Kanigel, Hearing Homer’s Song and The Man Who Knew Infinity
“A scarily prescient novel that deftly explores the fraught connections between individuality, society, public policy, and technology.”
--Courney Harler, Harler Literary LLC
“An emotional, haunting tale leaves you with more questions than answers, and that's a good thing. A memorable and timely reminder that there are no easy solutions when fear and conspiracy feed like hungry beasts and the innocent exist simply for the taking.”
--PJ McIlvaine, screenwriter, My Horrible Year
The Potrero Complex is set in a familiar-feeling near-future world in Maryland, following five years of a pandemic that has changed everything.
Journalist Rags Goldner is sick of covering the devastation that is big-city Baltimore, and seeks a quieter refuge in smaller town Canary. But adversity follows her in the form of a missing teenager case that commands her attention and her reporter's eye for detail, and suddenly Rags is involved over her head in a dilemma that moves from the fate of one missing teen to a plot that involves much more: "Rags hadn’t been in town five minutes and already she could tell things were going to get complicated—and complicated was the very thing she and Flint were trying to get away from."
The post-pandemic world Rags navigates contains many vestiges of modern-day experience, giving it a realistic tone that eases readers into an immediate future that feels all too possible: "Over half the people in the room wore respies—the latest generation of facemask respirators, which looked like translucent teardrops covering the nose and mouth; they simply could not believe that the era of contagion was actually over. Rags did not count herself among them, putting herself automatically at odds with many of those around her. At least no one was required to wear a respie now—a small sign of progress."
As she probes missing papers, a troubling puzzle, a conspiracy, and a growing mystery that reaches out to affect her life, Rags leads readers on a journey replete with health hazards, threats, intrigue, and threats not just to individuals, but freedom in America.
Amy Bernstein's ability to place all these forces and influences in perspective gives the story a powerful tone that makes for absolutely compelling reading.
Anyone immersed in the experience and possible outcomes of social change after this pandemic will find The Potrero Complex frightening and hard to put down, presenting thought-provoking insights on the progress and erosion of freedom in the name of safety and social preservation.
It's a story highly recommended for libraries interested not just in thriller and suspense stories, but accounts that encourage close examination of liberty, life, and making a stand to preserve both against all odds.
Book club readers will find these themes packed with discussion points, while those interested in mystery and suspense will find this social inspection firmly rooted in a compelling drama that features a surprising outcome.
