Mitt Witten - " 51% "
Dear Reader-
I wrote 51% because I’m mad as heck that monster corporations are increasingly running the world. The oil companies cause climate change, and Elon Musk messes with our elections. So many things are getting privatized: electricity, water, schools, the military, and, pretty soon, the Post Office.
I wanted to inspire readers to take a good look at this dangerous road we're heading down, and how we can change course. Because in every generation, we have to defend democracy all over again.
But of course, I had to channel my frustrations into something entertaining! So I wrote 51% as a futuristic novel with murder-mystery, adventure, and romance elements.
51% begins on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Dawn. Crime scene. A young immigrant woman lies on the street, beaten to death, surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. We've seen this scene on TV a thousand times before, right? Except: the tape doesn’t say “New York Police Department.” It says “New York Police Department, Incorporated.” Because the NYPD has gone private now.
The body is lit by the cool, shifting, green-to-blue-to-red LED hue of a nearby building. Strangest of all: there are only two cops on the scene... and they're not talking about solving the murder. They're talking about how they’ll raise money for the investigation.
It's 2046. And this is how it's done. Just about everything is corporate-owned.
Even people. To pay for college, health care, and day care, a lot of people sell off parts of their income to the corporate syndicates – until they’re 51% owned, and basically indentured servants.
Fortunately, there’s a Resistance: good people working together to fight the power. And our two cops become reluctant heroes, uncovering a homicidal syndicate conspiracy and starting a revolution.
If you want to take a chance on a book that’s probably unlike anything you’ve read before, an entertaining mystery thriller set in a future world that’s uncomfortably like our own, check out 51%! I hope you’ll be futuristically pleased ..in the present world that is.
-Matt Witten
Matt Witten is a TV writer, novelist, playwright and screenwriter who has written for many TV shows including House, Pretty Little Liars, and Law & Order. His thriller novel “The Necklace” came out from Oceanview Publishing in 2022, and has been optioned for film by Leonardo DiCaprio; his latest thriller is “Killer Story”. Matt wrote four amateur sleuth novels that were published by Signet, including the Malice Domestic Award-winning “Breakfast at Madeline’s”, and he has been nominated for two Edgars and an Emmy.
Visit Matt’s website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.