51% - by Matt Witten (Paperback)

About the Book

In a future where corporations own everything-including people-one murder could ignite a revolution.

Book Synopsis

In a future where corporations own everything-including people-one murder could ignite a revolution.

Twenty years from now, the United States is completely privatized. The Big Six syndicates own schools, roads, police departments...even human beings.

When a young immigrant woman-51% owned by the syndicates-is brutally murdered, NYPD, Inc. Detective Juke O'Keefe and his partner, Crime Marketing Consultant Haylee Navarro, catch the case. Pregnant and broke, Haylee knows they can't crowdfund enough from a dead immigrant to pay for basic forensics, let alone their paychecks. But Juke, with his old-school sense of justice, is determined to find the killer.

Their search for the truth leads them to Juke's ex, Safiya Jones, a Resistance leader on the syndicates' most wanted list. As the three join forces, they stumble onto a conspiracy designed to destroy the last shreds of American freedom. To rescue fifty-one percenters-and everyone else-from syndicate control, they'll have to defeat the most ruthless, powerful AI in the world.

51% is a gritty, fast-paced thriller about power, justice, and what happens when everything-even people-can be owned.

Review Quotes

"Matt Witten takes us on a hallucinatory trip into a dystopian near-future in which fire and police departments, once-public hospitals, and even streets have been ruthlessly privatized, services go to the highest bidder, and the indebted sell themselves to profit-making syndicates. Witten's noir thriller moves at propulsive speed, intertwining beleaguered cops, corporate predators, underground rebels, and AI-driven supercomputers. It is a world whose seeds, Witten suggests, have already been planted."-Fergus M. Bordewich, award-winning author of Klan War

"Matt Witten's 51% is a thrilling and adventurous glimpse into an all-too-possible, terrifying future, with characters full of heart who fight for justice against the cruelty of corporate-led AI. I couldn't put this book down-read it now!"-Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of The Mentor and The Great Gimmelmans

"Sharp, urgent, and impossible to put down. 51% is the dystopian thriller America needs right now. A premise so good I wish I had thought of it."-Daniel G. Miller, USA Today bestselling author of The Orphanage By The Lake

"Part cop-drama, part dystopian-nightmare, and completely unputdownable, 51% draws us into a near-future society where everything is privatized and monitored. When a young girl owned by a syndicate is murdered, an officer in the for-profit NYPD, Inc., takes on the case-against the urging of his colleagues, as this investigation is not likely to pay out. A thought-provoking and propulsive look at greed, autonomy, and resilience in a world gone wrong."-Allison Buccola, author of The Ascent