
In a future where homicide is almost extinct, a single murder shocks a society that treats crime as a curable disease. The body of an 18‑year‑old student is discovered beneath the overgrown tracks of New York’s Central Park, her death a baffling anomaly in a world where every citizen’s biometric data is catalogued from birth. As the Federal Police—now the sole law‑enforcement authority—take the case, they must navigate a system that has long ago abandoned traditional homicide units.
The victim, Madolin Akkra, lived in a crumbling high‑rise with a father whose outdated attitudes clash with the hyper‑automated world around them. Her enrollment in a spaceship‑maintenance program and the peculiar circumstances of her family life provide the investigators with a maze of social and technological clues. Listeners will follow the methodical, almost clinical, pursuit of answers as specialists in psychiatry, forensics, and sociology piece together a puzzle that could redefine how future society understands violence.
Language
en
Duration
~23 minutes (22K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
United States: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1961.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2023-11-22
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1888–1975
A sharp, versatile writer, she moved from journalism and activism into mystery and science fiction, bringing clear thinking and social concerns to both. Her stories often mix suspense with big ideas about gender, society, and the strange turns of human behavior.
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