Release date: August 11, 2020
Subgenre: Dystopian noir
About The Invisible:
It’s election time in New Babylon, and President Maggie Delgado is
running for re-election but is threatened by the charismatic populist
Ted Rust. Newly appointed City Commissioner Georg Ratner is given the
priority task to fight the recent invasion of Synth in the streets of
the capital, a powerful hallucinogen drug with a mysterious origin. When
his old colleague asks him for help on another case and gets murdered,
things become more and more complicated, and his official neutrality
becomes a burden in the political intrigue he his gradually sucked into.
Supported by Laura, his trustful life partner and the Egyptian goddess
Nut, Ratner decides to fight for what he believes in, no matter the
cost.
Excerpt:
City Commissioner Georg Ratner looked out the large window of his
new office, taking in the breathtaking view of the city. New
Babylon sparkled in the mid-November morning. The sky was still
black, although a thin gray stripe in the east indicated the
imminent rise of a pale sun.
“Is everything okay, sir?”
Ratner glanced at the large designer desk, the designer leather
armchair, the designer wastebasket, the designer bookshelves, his
personal water fountain and nodded.
“Everything’s fine,” he grunted. “Everything’s fine. I just need an
ashtray.”
“Yes, of course.”
Ratner smiled with gratitude at his new secretary, Mrs. Gardiner.
She smiled back.
She was a middle-aged woman who could have been anything between
forty-five and sixty-five, as she had almost no wrinkles and her
hair was died a reddish brown. Good-looking too, although that had
nothing to do with anything. Ratner hated those automatic thoughts
whenever they popped up. He was neither a sexist, nor a satyr. But
sometimes his sense of observation collided with obsolete social
constructions. Or rather—with constructions that should be
obsolete.
“Mr. Klein smoked too. The pipe,” she added.
Ratner nodded. He was replacing a dead man, who had the paradoxical
reputation of being both extremely corrupt and extremely efficient.
It would be hard to live up to his level.
“I smoke cigarettes,” Ratner said. “And cigars, once in a while. I
hope you don’t mind.”
Mrs. Gardiner tugged at her black turtleneck.
“I smoke too,” she explained. “Oh, and Mr. Klein had a minibar
installed while he was in office. I mean, it’s a minifridge. You
can put in whatever you want, of course. Water, for example. It’s
in the basement at the moment. I can ask Eric to bring it back for
you.”
Ratner didn’t know if she was making things up, but her tone seemed
hopeful.
“Yes,” he said. “That would be very nice.”
Once Mrs. Gardiner had left, the new city commissioner walked to
his desk and sat in the designer armchair. It was more comfortable
than he had imagined.
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About Seb Doubinsky:
Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual writer born in Paris in 1963. His
novels, all set in a dystopian universe revolving around competing
cities-states, have been published in the UK and in the USA. He
currently lives with his family in Aarhus, Denmark, where he
teaches at the university.
Website | Twitter
About Meerkat Press:
Meerkat Press is an independent publisher committed to finding and
publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction. And despite
the previous sentence, we frown on overuse of adjectives and adverbs in
submissions. *smile*
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