Blind Spots

Description of Blind Spots

After an inner city family is shot and killed by a young boy, the police commence a search for the person who supplied the gun to the boy.  Milo Krantz is one of the first to be arrested.  As a rent collector for a notorious slumlord, he is one of the most despised people in the neighborhood.  However, when he later appears in court, Milo does an abrupt about-face: he not only confesses to the crime, he refuses to say anything in his own defense.

This sudden change in attitude baffles Gunther Mulvaney, the detective who arrested Milo.  Suspicious that Milo is taking the fall for someone else, a stubborn Gunther continues his investigation, which eventually intersects with one being conducted by a private investigator secretly hired to explore the mysterious circumstances surrounding the hospitalization five years earlier of the judge in Milo’s case.  But not until Gunther uncovers Milo’s past connection with the judge does he begin to learn the real story behind Milo’s confession.

Reviews of Blind Spots

The novel Blind Spots by Patrick M. Garry once again shows this author’s uncanny ability to take a simple story and turn it into a powerful and moving experience for the reader.  In this book, the main characters eventually are faced with a decision that will change each of their lives forever.  The choice is between what is morally and ethically right or the expedient alternative.  The twists come like body blows as each one decides, and the novel’s conclusion will leave the reader feeling as though they have been struck by a sledge hammer to the chest. Blind Spots reinforces my feeling that Patrick Garry is one of our best American writers, and his work deserves a far bigger audience.  If you haven’t read one of his books, I would recommend that you start now.
-John Austin,The Book Club, WTAN, Tampa, Florida

With his novel Blind Spots, talented author on the rise Patrick Garry has written a novel that reveals the blind spots in America’s judicial system with this immensely engrossing and entertaining take on a crime drama told from multiple perspectives. The different perspectives help to fill in the “blind spots” that play a big role, more often than not, in getting convictions in criminal court cases.

The relative brevity of Blind Spots, at 237 pages, does not mean that it is at all lacking in plot intricacy nor in the raw, emotional punch that it packs.  Though it is a novel, Blind Spots reveals how the blind spots in America’s judicial system sometimes results in the conviction of innocent people for crimes that they did not commit, while the guilty go free.  Anyone who loves reading crime novels, thrillers and mysteries will  want to check out this novel by Patrick Garry today!
-CDA News Link to full review

Blind Spots clearly shows us that being sentenced to jail is not the only way in which one can be held captive. Detective Gunther Mulvaney, Judge Donna Davis, and Milo Krantz’s lives become inextricably cast together after the death of an inner city family. Mulvaney, who arrested Krantz, prides himself on having never sent an innocent man to jail. Davis, the presiding judge, struggles with her marriage to a power-hungry politician and her having once felt a true love that was lost. Krantz is a rent collector, a hated thug in the community who would rather go to prison than divulge his well kept, heart breaking tale. Secrets are slowly unraveled resulting in a story of misguided and misunderstood love, betrayal, and ultimately silence.

Here’s a case where good things come in small packages. At 237 pages, Blind Spots is short on size but it carries a big wallop. Garry is well versed in the political and judicial systems and it shows.  He uses his knowledge and strong writing to expertly weave together an unlikely cast of three characters: a judge, a detective, and a criminal, all of whom have more in common than they could possibly know. The story is crisp, has witty believable dialog and moves at a fast clip. Always keeping the plot goal in mind, Garry does not divert our attention with extraneous detail but instead sets up the scenes, gets to the point, and delivers the punches.

Blind Spots is a well-written, well-crafted story. The dialog is snappy and the characters entirely credible. The plot action moves at a rapid pace never letting up until the unsettling ending. Amazing at how much the characters are developed in such a compact story, this book rates very high in both writing skill and the art of suspenseful and introspective story telling. Blind Spots is an enjoyable, intelligent read and I give it a Highly Recommended rating.
-Wendy Thomas, Allbooks Reviews

In a rundown Minneapolis neighborhood, a woman and her three children are shot to death by someone using an automatic weapon. The city is shocked. The police department goes on full alert.

It isn’t long before the police discover the actual killer is a 12-year-old. The identity of the killer doesn’t change the civic pressure on the police to come up with a suspect that could have put an automatic weapon in the hands of a child. An early suspect turned out to be Milo Krantz, a despised rent collector for the slum lord who owns the building where the killings occurred, a nasty piece of work with a criminal record.  Now it’s up to police detective Gunther Mulvaney to build the case against Milo, but he soon discovers that there’s not much of a case against him. Nevertheless, Milo is taken to court where the judge sets bail at $200,000 and is sent back to jail.

The judge is Donna Davis, a smart, glamorous attorney married to Steven Davis, the state’s attorney general who is also a candidate for the U.S. Senate. But Donna and her marriage are not without complications. Coping with her husband’s ongoing unfaithfulness, and she with a lover of her own, Donna nonetheless recognizes the value of her relationship to her husband and the necessity to keep all the pieces of her life together for both of their careers. With Steven’s success, there might be a federal judgeship waiting for her.

The couple understands her handling of Milo Krantz will be heavily scrutinized in view of the prominence of the case and the possible impact on the future of the power couple’s mutual careers.

Unexpectedly, Milo throws a bombshell into his case. He will not testify. He declares he is guilty and refuses to attend any further hearings. Police detective Gunther is blind-sided. He knows Milo is innocent but cannot understand why Milo is willing to destroy his life when justice would demand he be set free.

This is where Blind Spotsfinds its unique voice. It becomes the story of a chance meeting in a hospital where one of them is healing following a devastating car accident. Two people from different worlds to explore a pure love, a chance for each to become someone better than they were before they met and a closeness that heals both of them on multiple levels. But for reasons best left to reading the novel, it is both real and unreal, life-changing and yet impossible. It is temporary. It ends abruptly. It only reemerges when Milo is about to go on trial, with Shakespearean consequences on them both that no one could have foreseen.

This well-crafted, clear-eyed novel will make you wonder anew about the power of love, both good and bad, and ask you to consider what your heart, mind and, yes, ethics would have you do under similar circumstances. Blind Spotsis a gem. Highly recommended.

Blind Spotsby Patrick Garry won First Place in the 2015 CLUE Awards for suspense and thriller novels.
-Chanticleer Book Reviews

This is a great Goodreads book. From the description of the book you anticipate a crime mystery story. It is this but also a love story that romance readers may also enjoy. The surprise ending is not what you may expect.  I look forward to more books by Patrick M. Garry.

-Susan Krich, Goodreads 5-Star review

Award-winning author, Patrick Garry, spins a mystery within a mystery in his recent novel. Key to Garry’s third person narrative is a complex cast. Garry features a handful of tainted characters—namely Gunther Mulvaney, Milo Krantz, Judge Donna Davis, and her husband, Steven Davis—hiding behind facades . Surrounded by a supplemental yet foiled cast, each principal character (whether a professional or supposed lowlife like Milo) is a mixed bag of personalities laced with problems and/or deception. That said, Garry keeps readers scratching their heads and wishing that the real culprit would rise to the surface. Adding to the confusion, Garry’s characters also have their own set of convoluted circumstances that slowly intertwine in the body of plot.

Garry keeps his story moving by incorporating the aforementioned literary tools within chapters that alternate between character scenes as well as backstories. Amid a flurry of activity and red herrings, Garry also includes cliffhanging chapter endings that eventually (for the most part) get resolved in subsequent chapters. Replete with plenty of twists and turns and closing on an eerily open-ended note, Blind Spots is not only a top-of-the-line read for mystery aficionados and beyond, but also earmarked to be another award-winning book.
–Manhattan Book Review, 5-star review

On the surface, Blind Spots is the story of Milo Krantz, a rent collector for a slumlord who stands accused of providing the gun used to slaughter a mother and her children. He is a career criminal who, though now working legitimately, has failed to redeem himself since his job is threatening people into paying their rent.  Under the surface, however, is a man who feeds the very children whose parents can’t pay rent.  Milo at one point aspired to make more of himself and is ashamed of what he does, but hides it all under a façade of bravado and pride. This façade starts to break once he faces the judge who presides over his case.

Judge Donna Davis is a woman with a past she is trying to hide.  Trapped in a marriage where both parties use each other to get ahead, she lives with the memories of the one man who stood by her when she was left blind and hospitalized after an accident.  Those memories start to blend with reality once she is faced with Milo Krantz in her courtroom.  Detective Gunther Mulvaney is the person who arrested Milo and who starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Under the surface story of Blind Spots you will find a deeper story of true love, lost love and the effects it has on our lives.  The most interesting thing about the way this love story was written is the way the author intertwined both Donna and Milo’s memories of their story.  Rather than see it from only one perspective, the reader is able to see it from both sides which helps make it more real.  As much as these two people may have been mismatched and from different worlds, they truly loved each other and it was impossible not to want them to end up together.  The ending of the book was heartbreaking, but real.  The author did not cop out and give the reader a happy, tidy ending.  Mr. Garry gave the reader a realistic ending to a story that was tragic from the beginning.  I look forward to more work from this talented author.”
-Danielle Feliciano, book review appearing in Reuters

Blind Spots, by Patrick Garry, is another well-written and intriguing read by the author of the award-winning Finding Flipper Frank.

In this most recent book, Garry takes the reader on an edge-of-your seat journey through the convoluted workings of inner city protections and politics, a somewhat skewed judicial system and then into the mind of an ‘honorable’ man doing what he believes to be the right thing. Yet, what exactly is the ‘right’ thing when the country has just been presented with the death of a mother and her three young children; shot to death in their own home….

I don’t want to give any additional story plots or action away, but suffice it to say that Blind Spots was almost impossible to set down. While it did have a slower start, due to necessary character introductions and additional plot twists, Garry more than made up for it as the tale progressed. Interesting, believable and well-written, Blind Spots was a masterfully woven web of psychological drama with more players, and twists, than the reader might expect.
-Charline Ratcliff, for Feathered Quill Book Reviews

Blind Spots makes engrossing reading. This is a great story, an enthralling tale with a surprising twist, which I loved. I found the book to be one I could not put down easily. … Blind Spots is excellent and well-written; it’s well plotted and well worth the time it takes to read. I loved it and enjoyed every page.
– Reader’s Favorite

“Patrick Garry crafts a courtroom setting to stage the psychological drama that makes this book a page turner. On the surface, the courtroom drama propels the reader through the pages. But on a more profound level, the novel explores the ways in which ambition and fear can cloud one’s perception of truth. His use of alternating viewpoints is a skillful device for not only revealing each character’s thoughts and inclinations, but also for revealing how each character misinterprets events and sometimes deliberately deceives themselves.  His story leaves the reader thinking about it for days afterward and anticipating the next novel from this new writer.”
–Midwest Book Review

“She always said that the role of a judge was to keep an eye out for the blind spots of justice.”