THE LAST EXIT

A dystopian thriller whose heroine, aided by an infallible AI implant, seeks the malefactors behind a deliberately engineered epidemic.

Life in the 2030s is good in some ways (LSD is legal, men can give birth), bad in others (Miami Beach is no more, Disney has bought the National Park Service). The world of Detective Jennifer Lu of the Metro D.C. Police’s Elder Abuse Unit mainly revolves around two more personal poles: her mistreatment as a child by her monstrous mother, who’s now in a nursing home with dementia, and the triumph of the “65 and Out” movement, which requires euthanasia for all parents of that age whose childless children want to get “the treatment” that will make them Timeless, prolonging their lives for decades longer. A chance remark Jen and her synth implant, Chandler, overhear while she’s pursuing an assault case against White supremacist James O’Neil and witnessing a shooting involving Delmar Johnson Sr., a father who’s not ready to die for Delmar Johnson Jr., alerts her to a broader menace: the possibility that cases of rapid onset spongiform encephalitis, once virtually unheard of, are spiking because of a counterfeit treatment that promises Timeless life but kills its victims swiftly. Warned off the assault case by O’Neil’s Timeless father, 112-year-old billionaire Richard O’Neil, and shut down at every turn by her boss, Capt. Kyrie Brooks, Jen struggles to make headway against a monstrous conspiracy. All the while, Kaufman keeps the pot boiling by setting a series of illegal atrocities against the perfectly legal kind his world mostly accepts.

A strong, richly imagined brew for stouthearted readers, with hints of a series to follow.