Failed State: A Novel

A Philip
K. Dick Award Nominee

"The novel is as tense and thrilling as any of Brown's work, and as full of rage and hope. It's a novel that truly reckons with the enormity of  both our climate emergency and the system that produced it - a tale of  human imperfection and redemption." -- Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of Walkaway

In this
second dystopian legal thriller from the author of the acclaimed Rule of
Capture and Tropic
of Kansas, lawyer Donny Kimoe juggles two
intertwined cases whose outcomes will determine the course of America’s
future—and his own.

In
the aftermath of a second American revolution, peace rests on a fragile truce. The
old regime has been deposed, but the ex-president has vanished, escaping
justice for his crimes. Some believe he is dead. Others fear he is in hiding,
gathering forces. As the factions in Washington work to restore order, Donny
Kimoe is in court to settle old scores—and pay his own debts come due.

Meanwhile,
the rebels Donny once defended are exacting their own kind of justice. In the
ruins of New Orleans, they are building a green utopia—and kidnapping their
defeated adversaries to pay for it. The newest hostage is the young heiress to
a fortune made from plundering the country—and the daughter of one of Donny’s oldest
friends. In a desperate gambit to save his own skin, Donny switches sides to
defend her before the show trial. If he fails, so will the truce, dragging the
country back into violence. But by taking the case, he risks his last chance to
expose the atrocities of the dictatorship—and being tried for his own crimes
against the revolution.

To save the future, Donny has to gamble his own. The
only way out is to find the evidence that will get both sides back to the table,
and secure a more lasting peace. To do that, Donny must betray his clients’
secrets. Including one explosive secret hidden in the ruins, the discovery of
which could extinguish the last hope for a better tomorrow—or, if Donny plays
it right, keep it burning.

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“Provides a glimmer of hope that the usurpers of the Constitution may be beaten at their own game, ‘one case at a time.’ Interpersonal drama fuels the story as much as legal maneuvering, and Brown keeps tight control of his narrative even as this alternate America slips its gears.”

- Publishers Weekly starred review on Rule of Capture

“Sharply observed, tightly written. bitterly funny, with the underlying tang of unpleasant truth… [P]ut this one on the shelf next to Orwell.”—Locus on Rule of Capture “This one is fresh, intelligent, and emotional with a plot that envisions an alternate reality hard to dismiss as unreal.  It’s a legal thriller, with a big twist, stirring and imaginative, brimming with skullduggery, that will have you asking: is this possible?”  - New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry on Rule of Capture

“A kind of madcap Texas Gothic dark comedy, as the Houston good ole boy network is displayed like a courtroom scene in an unpublished Hunter S. Thompson novel. . . . It moves, rocketing along at a ferocious pace—and then it lingers, haunting you.”

- Cory Doctorow BoingBoing on Rule of Capture

“Rule of Capture is a taut, smart legal thriller set five minutes into the future in a dystopian post-war America that looks scarily plausible from the vantage point of 2019, and marks Brown as one of our most tuned-in science fiction writers.”

- Adrian McKinty Edgar and Ned Kelly Award-winning author of The Chain and Rain Dogs on Rule of Capture

“Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius . . . a truly hallucinatory environment.”

- William Gibson New York Times bestselling and award-winning author on Tropic of Kansas

"The novel is as tense and thrilling as any of Brown's work, and as full

of rage and hope. It's a novel that truly reckons with the enormity of

both our climate emergency and the system that produced it - a tale of

human imperfection and redemption." - Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of Walkaway

"Brown’s larger-than-life near-future legal thriller of environmental collapse and social rebuilding…[he] adds new layers to the wildly imaginative dystopian setting of his first two works, now with an emphasis on environmental law. The scenes of sunken New Orleans are vivid and will keep the pages turning to an overloaded climax that nevertheless sets things up nicely for the next volume. Readers will be eager to see it." - Publishers Weekly