An Ethical Guide to Murder: A Novel

The Power meets Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone in this darkly funny debut, in which a woman suddenly develops the ability to see how long people have to live—and discovers she can also take years of life from one person and bestow them to another.

What would you do if you had the power to take someone’s life? If you had the ability to redistribute minutes, hours, months or years of life from one person to another.
Would you kill a bad person to save a good one? Or would you use it for your own gains?

How would you decide who lives – or who dies?

These are the questions that Thea has to ask herself when she finds out that she can give or take life from others. But despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit. Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job. Creating an ‘Ethical Guide to Murder’ helps Thea to focus on giving those most deserving more time, but what would you do if you had the power to control life and death and you weren’t sure who actually deserves it?

On a night out, Thea’s best friend Ruth is knocked to the ground by a fighting man, suffering a fatal head injury. When the man comes to check if Ruth is alright and places his hand on Thea’s arm, she can see how long he has left to live. Thea, desperate to save her friend, touches Ruth and to her surprise transfers life from the man back into Ruth.
As Ruth comes to, surrounded by people, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead.

Thea realises she has a godlike power: all she has to do is touch someone. She wants to do good, but in her fight to preserve right and eliminate wrong, how can she really know who deserves to die?