Pattern Recognition

Modern day mystery stories are in high demand right now. Stories like The Da Vinci Code are in high demand these days, but a truly ideal mystery for this day and age lies in Pattern Recognition. The mystery thriller stories of old are taken from the streets and the crime labs and thrown onto the Internet. Problems are solved with constant access to the Internet and sending long emails to sources halfway around the world. The main character, Cayce, is the typical specialist hired in said novels to sniff out the patterns behind a long set of videos being posted on a secret chat room. Transplanting the feel of a thriller novel onto a modern day science fiction prose is becoming more and more popular. Writers are taking the changing times and slowly integrating them into classic plots.

Imagine if Harry Potter and the other students at Hogwarts began downloading all of their magical textbooks onto a kindle. That is the feel that Pattern Recognition captures. Cayce uses the Internet and her handy laptop to connect to the underground film scene that houses the film clips, her informant Parkaboy, and the companies she works for. In that right, Cayce is an everyman heroine, using the same kind of technologies we use to get her wherever she needs to go. A fully modern girl, she finds no time to settle down and develop a relationship. She suffers from insomnia from all of her job-based travels, focuses entirely on her job, and is never afraid to jump head first into a dangerous situation. Despite these typical alpha-female character traits, we begin to she ourselves in her through her various Internet connections. So much of our lives nowadays revolve around the Internet and for someone to not have a relationship based solely on the Internet is rare.  Cayce and Parkaboy’s relationship is entirely Internet-based, the two of them communicating only through emails, and a rare phone call or two that Cayce herself admits are awkward. The understanding of these relationships and the integration of said relationships into a traditional thriller setting is a fantastic connection to today’s lifestyles that makes Pattern Recognition such a unique spark.