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A chat with noted crime writer Matt Witten about his dystopian murder-mystery thriller, 51%.
Website
mattwittenwriter.com
Facebook
@wittenmatt
About 51%
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.
Praise for 51%
“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
About Matt Witten
Matt Witten is a TV writer, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who has written for Law & Order, House, Pretty Little Liars, Supernatural, and many other shows. His thriller The Necklace has been published in eight languages and optioned for film by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Matt wrote five mystery novels, including the Malice Domestic Award-winning Breakfast at Madeline’s, and has been nominated for two Edgars and an Emmy. His dystopian murder mystery thriller 51% came out in April; NBC has already hired him to write a TV adaptation.
He lives in upstate New York.