Book Spotlight | The Last Exit by Michael Kaufman

Today the spotlight is on The Last Exit, a sci-fi mystery by Michael Kaufman! Thank you so much to Crooked Lane Books and Books Forward for a review copy. I’m sharing the synopsis and excerpt below. This book is out now!

Here’s the synopsis and an excerpt of The Last Exit:

Publication Date: 12 January 2021
Page Count: 298 pages
Genre: Science Fiction/Mystery
Author: Michael Kaufman

Synopsis:

Set in Washington D.C. in the near future, climate change has hit hard, fires are burning, unemployment is high, and controversial longevity treatments are only available to the very rich. Enter resourceful young police detective, Jen B. Lu, and her ‘partner’, Chandler, a SIM implant in her brain and her instant link to the Internet and police records, and constant voice inside her head. He’s an inquisitive tough guy, with a helluva sense of humor and his own ideas about solving crimes.

As a detective in the Elder Abuse unit, Jen is supposed to be investigating kids pushing their aging parents to “exit” so they are eligible to get the longevity drug. But what really has her attention are the persistent rumors about Eden, an illegal version of the longevity drug, and the bizarre outbreak of people aging almost overnight, then suddenly dying–is this all connected? Is Big Pharma involved?

When Jen’s investigations of Eden take her too close to the truth, she is suspended, Chandler is deactivated, and her boyfriend is freaked out by “the thing inside her brain.” This leaves Jen to pursue a very dangerous investigation all by herself.

Excerpt:

Tuesday, July 3—08:00:05

It was only eight in the morning, but I could already feel sweat collecting under our breasts. Jen had been kicked in the butt for switching me off for five minutes while on duty last week, so for the third day in a row, we were back in regulation blues, trudging along the two-mile path circling the Tidal Basin.

It was boring work. Retrieve phones dropped in the water. Search for kids who eluded their parents’ jail-guard gaze for two seconds. Tolerate the private US Park Police. Help the dumber tourists figure out which one was the Jefferson Monument. Keep an eye out for the saltwater crocs. This task seemed a particular waste of time since only one had been spotted so far this summer. But then again, it had eaten a jogger. When the croc was shot and sliced open, the running shoes still looked new.

I was young, two years and three months. Detective Jen Lu was thirty-eight and change. I’ll be dead in three more years. She’ll live to a hundred after her mother does her duty and exits, and Jen can snag the treatment. Good for her.

08:03:52. The sun was smudged by haze that hung around like a fart under a blanket. We heard a shout by the FDR Memorial. Then a scream. I tagged the time and our position. We ran.

A Caucasian man who looked like he’d been stewed in scarlet food coloring was screaming at a Black woman in yellow running gear. She was lying on her side, clutching her shoulder. I scanned the man and found a match.

“Watch out,” I cautioned Jen. We ran harder.

The man saw us and shot off like he had a Roman candle up his butt. We reached the prone woman, yelled, “You alright?” We got a nod and took off after the man.

He was good. We were better. We tackled him at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Nonviolence has its place, but I whacked him across the face.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Jen said.

“Sure I did, and you know it.”

James O’Neil. Twenty-seven. Follows the Klan and two neo-Nazi sites. Arrested once for battery. Dad is a Timeless, so James got off.

We cuffed him and I called it in. We waited for the car, handed him over, me sharing the data and time stamp with the officer’s synth. We went back and called an ambulance for the jogger, although she said she was fine.

Any hope we’d be rewarded with a better gig for the day crashed when I received the order to get back on patrol.

Tuesday, July 3. 08:42:11. Washington, DC. Good times.

Cover photo by Jeremy Yap