THE ADJUDICATOR

In a not-too-distant future where the state regulates its citizens’ genetics, a closeted empath gets called upon to investigate a death that challenges the infallibility of a totalitarian system.

Zedi Loew is an anomaly in a world where parents design their children and the state-run corporate enterprises grow babies in labs. Unlike these perfect offspring, she has the ability to feel the sensations of anyone around her—the result of “a premotor cortex gone kablooey”—making Zedi a target in a society that persecutes genetic deviants. Her job as an Adjudicator, a private investigator who looks for possible fraud in cases involving mental or physical deformities, allows her to remain undetected, especially when she assumes identities to go undercover. When Zedi is given a case involving the suicide of a young boy named Clayton and his strange relationship with a girl who “suffered the world as [he should] have…and vice versa,” she goes on a hunt to find Clayton’s mother for questioning. That trail takes her through surreal landscapes where people, including her own mother, find comfort in sleeping pills called Dormazin. The closer she gets to the truth of why she has been given this assignment, the more Zedi realizes that her investigation is less about gene editing gone wrong and more about ways DNA manipulation can potentially alter human consciousness and give manipulators the power to control entire populations. Blending SF with suspense and interweaving science with speculation, Daitch’s novel offers readers a glimpse into a future that is as alien as it is disturbingly familiar.

An engrossing story that grapples with dystopian possibilities lying at the intersection of ethics and technology.