Amazing. Original. Astonishing. Compelling. Shocking. Disturbing. And I don't know what to write to do this book justice. I loved it, the best book I've read this year, last year, for many years.
The blurb gives the outline. Nine people arrive one night on Chelsea Bridge. They’ve never met. But at the same time, they run, and leap to their deaths. Each of them received a letter in the post that morning, a pre-written suicide note, and a page containing only four words: Nothing important happened today.
That is how they knew they had been chosen to become a part of the People Of Choice: A mysterious suicide cult whose members have no knowledge of one another.
Thirty-two people on that train witness the event. Two of them will be next. By the morning, People Of Choice are appearing around the globe; it becomes a movement. A social media page that has lain dormant for four years suddenly has thousands of followers. The police are under pressure to find a link between the cult members, to locate a leader that does not seem to exist.
How do you stop a cult when nobody knows they are a member?
And so the story unfolds. It is written in the 3rd person AND the collective 1st person. It is in part an instruction maual on how to be the best serial killer ever, by killing the most people and not getting caught. There are details about previous serial killers like Bundy and Shipman, all very well researched. But the manual is spliced and diced with details about those who are about to/have just committed suicide. All of them have a number and some of them have a title like Doctor, Fighter, Nobody. They remain anonymous and yet the author very cleverly makes them real so that the reader cares about them, so that their deaths are heartbreaking. Especially when we realise that they take their own live and yet THEY DON'T WANT TO DIE!!
The writing is caustic and brutal and stark. 'You can feel it. When somebody jumps off a building and hits the floor, you can feel it.
It's the noise. You don't expect the noise.'
'They killed 256 people!
It should have been so many fucking more.'
The author has created a chilling serial killer, who's manual is not only informative, 'The real trick to being the biggest serial killer in history is to learn from all the other fuck-ups. No accomplice. No dependents. No mistakes.' But also highlights the issues of this modern society. 'We are so connected that we have become disconnected.' The killer had many points to make about society and the reasons why he was killing and calling people Nobodies but the book is so cleverly written that the Nobodies, the numbers, the suicides become real and you want to understand their lives and why they didn't want to die, because none of them did.
We do have a hero, an unlikely hero who manages to dodge death. I can't say too much without giving it away, but the ending is pure genius. 'The guy is a goddamned Nobody.'
The whole book is utter genius. It should be made into a film.