84K
{5/5} “Dani Cumali was murdered by a professional hit woman. A firm called Faircloud Associates have bought a discretion clause to close the case. Dani’s phone, the one that was registered to her, has been lost by the police. You were one of three people called from this device, which neither the killer nor the police found. One was a brothel. I am the other. I think it would be in both our interests to meet.”
84K by Claire North, published in 2018
Neila rescues a man who was bleeding. An ambulance wouldn’t come because she doesn’t have insurance, so she brought him onto her boat and took care of him. Eventually he asks her to call him Theo, although he reveals it’s not his real name. He says he’s going to kill the man who has his daughter.
This novel answers the question: what if human rights were abolished? It’s a future that is shocking, but also potentially not far off.
There are flashbacks to when he found out that he had a daughter and investigated her mother’s murder, and further back to when he was at school with a boy named Theo who was killed in a duel.
There’s a lot of switching back and forth in time, so you’ll want to read it when you have the focus. It’s also pretty serious. In fact, it’s the scariest novel I’ve read since Soft Apocalypse.
It’s about trying to be a better person in a world where many people are terrible, and many people don’t care.
In terms of the style, there is one unusual feature — many sentences are unfinished. The unfinished sentences do tell you what you need to know. This style works well with this story.
This is the 8th book I’ve read by North. I previously reviewed Notes from the Burning Age.