The Happier Dead

Sometimes, life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

The Happier Dead by Ivo Stourton (Solaris, $7.99)

Oates is a London cop in a dreary near-future where under-employed youth riot regularly and shopping malls are pumped full of “dreem,” a substance that induces a nostalgia which can only be assuaged by purchasing more of whatever stuff seems to make one feel better.

And the entire culture has been upended by “the treatment,” a new—and, of course, patent-protected—bioscience process that bestows eternal youth on those who can afford it. These eternally young few vacation at a spa made to look like a 1980s public school (which, of course, in London is a very private, very exclusive school)—and one of the vacationing “new show more young” has been murdered. Oates’ team is called in to investigate.

Unfortunately, one of the unwanted side-effects is that the upper-crust swells and captains of industry who’ve gotten “the treatment” are stuck with an aging mind that gums up the works, and a possible cure for this problem may be at the bottom of the murder. As Oates moves back and forth from the high-end spa to the dregs of London’s back alleys, we get all sides of the question of immortality and the morality of those who can afford it. By turns a thriller and a mystery, this dystopian novel uses the sci-fi premise as a means of cracking open human nature (particularly our fear of death) and taking a good look at it.

(Published on Lit/Rant on 3-2-2014: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/78311861554/sometimes-life-isnt-all-its-cracked-u... show less

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In the very near future the rich are able to extend their lives indefinitely, but the price of eternal youth is one that they can get others to pay. A political thriller, crime novel and stunning SF story.

The Great Spa sits on the edge of London, a structure visible from space. The power of Britain on the world stage rests in its monopoly on "The Treatment", a medical procedure which can transform the richest and most powerful into a state of permanent physical youth. The Great Spa is the place where the newly young immortals go to revitalise their aged souls. In this most important and secure of facilities, a murder of one of the guests threatens to destabilise the new order, and DCI Oates of the show more Metropolitan police is called in to investigate.

In a single day Oates must unravel the secrets behind the Treatment and the long ago disappearance of its creator, passing through a London riven with disorder and corruption, where adverts are transmitted directly into the imagination. As a night of widespread rioting takes hold of the city he moves towards a final climax which could lead to the destruction of the Great Spa, his own ruin, and the loss of everything he holds most dear.

A political thriller, crime novel and stunning SF story.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I gave up on p92.

There's nothing really *wrong* with the writing. There's nothing too terribly right with it, either. I think anyone who liked Brave New World or Altered Carbon would be okay with it. I found its Englishness wearing, the sheer and evident disdain for Muslims and Africans got on my tits (as they say Over There). It's like the US's homegrown Brad Thor and ilk with different targets.

I confess that I read the ending. It was as I expected, remembering I stopped reading on p92. I don't think that's a great recommendation, myownself, but there is a certain charm in knowing what the end of a thing will be before it arrives. I just am no longer in that place in my reading life. I want to be surprised (rare) or contented with the journey (far more frequent) to get where I expected to go. I was not contented and that is not fixable after a certain point. show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-happier-dead-by-ivo-stourton-queen-of-the-st...

Dystopian detective story of a not too distant future England where a rich minority have access to immortality treatments. Our policeman protagonist is called in to investigate a murder; it becomes clear that the mystery is intimately tied in with the whole political structure of society, which is anyway crumbling into riot and disorder, and he fights through to discover what is really going on. Interesting enough.