Sleep Before Dying (A Rack Lexington Mystery)

Seattle, 2062. It's been raining for eleven days, and a dead woman just climbed my stairs. Vera Callow has a pulse, a good coat, and a certified death notice from the Ledger Authority, the civic registry that decides who legally exists. Her accounts are sealed. Her mortgage auto-terminated. The state sent her a survey about her end-of-life experience. Somebody signed her out of the book, and the dead lack standing to complain. I'm Rack Lexington. Private detective. I used to work the Ledger's fraud desk, until the machine I trusted was used on me. Four hundred a day plus expenses, paid in paper: a dead woman can't tap a terminal. The good version: it's a clerical error, and I find the seam in a week. The bad version: someone did it on purpose. And a person who can write you out of the book can change a great deal more. I've never been hired by the good version. A hardboiled noir mystery in near-future Seattle. AI used for proofreading