This time-traveling, end-of-the-world police procedural with shades of Nicole Kidman’s Destroyer is an unputdownable thrilling ride with an interesting narrative choice.

I am thankful to Nicholas Binge, Tor, and NetGalley for my review copy. Below are my honest thoughts on this fantastic novella.

I feel like the book was written and marketed for me. Time-travel, end of the world, a police procedural, a retired cop brought in from the cold for a murder investigation. Couple it with an interesting narrative that is loosely epistolary – the novella is narrated through interview transcripts of the three key players of a major incident that takes place. My expectations were sky high, and I am ecstatic to say Extremity blows those expectations out massively and in grand, unputdownable, exhilarating style.

“I knocked on Julia’s door yesterday, and here we are. Jesus Christ. Julia fucking Torgrimsen. It really never goes to plan with you, does it?”

The book finds a rather world-weary Detective Chief Inspector, John Grossman, along with the naïve, bumbling, wet behind the ears Detective Constable Mark Cochrane, approaching the residence of Julia Torgrimsen, a retired police detective, who spent considerable time undercover in the depraved, macabre world of London’s billionaire elites. John Grossman, who would rather be elsewhere, forces Julia out of retirement as a mysterious assassin has taken out one of Britain’s billionaire elite, Bruno Donaldson. This is also a place to pause and reflect that Binge has a particularly sly, ironical and caustic sense of humor towards the elites of our world as he combines two of our current defining, notorious characters to make Bruno Donaldson, who is a tech giant making electric and self-driving cars and quite notorious for all the bad reasons. Julia is forced out of retirement for this case, given her undercover operation included extensive interactions with Bruno and other elites. There is a sense of mystery regarding Bruno’s death and the discovery of another Bruno corpse, right down to the fingerprints, forcing Julia down the rabbit hole, and making this not just a simple murder investigation.

What follows is a fantastically trippy narrative with an outstanding sense of pace and urgency while introducing one mind-blowing concept after another, juxtaposing elements of contempt and disgust at how these elites operate. This is also where the faux-epistolary narrative via the interview transcripts comes across as a sheer delight to the reader. Each of the PoV has its own voice and view into the events as they play out

“That worried me, because there’s something about hunting a suspect that needs a touch of killer instinct. It dips down into that primordial caveman hunter part of the brain. Lion hunts gazelle. Cat kills mouse.”

Julia is our primary PoV, and she comes across as a rather quick, curt, no-nonsense personality racked with guilt and demons of the past. With an almost self-destructive streak to her and layers of cynicism and contempt for the system, she is an unstoppable force of nature once she gets back into the groove of investigating. Being outside the force now, she doesn’t hesitate to break rules and protocols in her obsessive search for the killer, but her motivations keep changing even as she uncovers the multiple layers this murder hides. Angry, bitter, anti-social, and a survivor, Julia nevertheless has a soft core that peeks through, especially in her interactions with Mark. As we go deeper into the book, Julia’s obsessions reveal deep underlying truths and hurt about the world she had inhabited when she was undercover and the actions she took to close the case. There was no cost too high that she was unwilling to pay, and the way the events played out subsequently explains why she retired from the force to lead an anti-social life. Julia is damaged by those events, and this murder, along with its subsequent discoveries, gives her the chance to balance the scales. A chance that she doesn’t hesitate to grab, even if it again involves extremely hard choices & this is where the book most resembles the Nicole Kidman starrer, Destroyer ( a fantastic, dark, and depressing movie)

“You’ve got to follow the rules, have faith in the system – because if you lose that, what do you have left”

DCI John Grossman presents a study in contrast to Julia. Her erstwhile partner, especially when Julia was undercover, John admires Julia but also is afraid of her as an uncontrollable variable for this case. John also has immense faith in the system while acknowledging the flaws and blind spots that the system harbors. Funnily enough, once the case cracks open and Julia gets her claws into the case, John ends up being outmanoeuvred and manipulated by Julia. Even as the stakes escalate and the case goes from a simple murder to something epic, John remains the solid rock, rooting events and characters while providing perspective. John’s actions both in the past and present represent that stability which maverick characters like Julia need in order to remember the stakes. John also quite inadvertently provides some comic relief as he gets jerked around a fair bit by Julia.

Mark Cochrane is the audience surrogate in terms of the PoVs. Young and naïve, he has still heard enough that he holds Julia in extreme awe and more than a little bit of fear. His inexperience and naivety, coupled with his general bumbling attitude, enlivens proceedings and, in a way, almost forcing Julia to take him under her wing, which she does in her typically caustic manner. Mark starts off as a character who is way out of his depth, and as the book proceeds, he gets dragged in even further. This results in several moments of situational levity, and Mark makes certain bad situations even worse with his choices. All these choices, however, are believable of a character caught between the tempestuous Julia and his weary boss, John.

“You don’t have a monopoly on being a badass, Julia. Just on being a massive pain”

Given it’s a novella clocking in at around 180 pages, there is hardly a moment to waste, and Binge propels the narrative on rocket fuel. Things do happen rather quickly, and Julia is able to cut to the chase, plot-wise and character-wise, extremely efficiently. To an extent, this is also done for a reason, primarily to justify the blurb of the book. This was billed as a time-traveling, end-of-the-world police procedural, but for almost 60% of the book, it mostly works as a procedural. The SF elements get their stage at the backend of the book, and it introduces fantastic levels of complexity while being completely accessible as well. The SF elements are also used not just as a storytelling device but also to throw commentary on the elites, where nothing is enough, and there is always this hankering for more and more, even at the cost of the world. The ominous tone of the book ratchets up a level at this point, and it also sets the stage for the terrifying glimpse of the future influencing the choices the trio have to make. The ending is suitably thrilling and exciting, with Mark providing some moments of bumbling heroism. In a way, the sting does lie in the tale as the author uses this to provide a twist in the tale as well.

As I had mentioned before, the marketing of this book worked wonders as it seemed to be targeted at me, but I do wonder, given how late some of these developments happen in the narrative, if there was a better way to market this. I did pick it up because it had the keywords I love, but I also do think those could have really been a fantastic reveal as the book unfolds. Maybe these are questions for the publisher to ponder. It’s a bit like some of the movie trailers of the past decade that show more than what they should – as much as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice gets a lot of hate, sometimes I wonder if the Doomsday reveal could have actually been saved for the movie. Not sure if it would have helped a lot, given the mixed quality of the movie anyway.

“That’s what separates us, Julia. Even after everything that’s happened, that’s what’s always separates us. You might be the smartest detective I know, but that’s what makes me a better officer. Faith.”

Extremity is a fantastic, twisty, exhilarating novella that leverages a crisscrossing narrative to flesh out complex character dynamics and redemption arcs in a no-wasted-pages approach. The novella does pack in some damaged characters and their ways of coping with losses while also providing commentary on some of the searing inequalities and depravities that we associate with the elites of our world. The novella was searingly unputdownable and is easily in the running for best novella of the year.

Rating – 4.5 Double Murders on 5

Extremity is available now – you can order your copy from Bookshop.org