
Law graduate Thea spends her days dreaming of doing something more challenging than working within a financial institution’s HR department, just about tolerating her annoying boss. One boozy evening, her friend Ruth suffers a serious head injury, and as Thea kneels beside her dying friend, Greg – who’d accidentally knocked her over – asks “is Ruth OK?”
Whereupon Thea, equally accidentally, discovers her power to find out how long someone has left to live, just by touching them – and to transfer their life expectancy to another body. So while Ruth recovers as Greg dies prematurely on the nightclub floor, she now has just five months to live, time she gained from Greg. What is Thea going to do with this newfound power, to keep her friend alive for longer – and how can she use it to her advantage when it comes to deciding who lives or who dies?
What follows is a bewitching, deadly and cleverly audacious read with psychological weight (author Jenny Morris has a psychology PhD) and a dark heart. Humour abounds, too, but An Ethical Guide To Murder raises a more serious question: should a good person, as opposed to someone that you personally judge as being morally inferior, be granted life?
An Ethical Guide To Murder, Jenny Morris (Simon & Schuster)
Price: £16.99/£11.99 Ebook/£18.99 audiobook. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT