Failed State

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.