Places in the Darkness by Christopher Brookmyre (2017)Read about another entry on the list.
230,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, Ciudad de Cielo is filled with almost every vice and foible known to humanity. This is a paradise for bent private cop Nicola “Nikki Fixx” Freeman, because it offers many ways for a high-ranking Seguridad officer to siphon off some extra wealth for herself. The system works, as long as nobody gets too greedy and everyone remembers that there are limits to the crimes to which the authorities can turn a blind eye.
Murder is bad enough. A dead criminal’s flayed, dismembered body is far worse, because not only does it suggest that some ambitious would-be crime lord is greedy enough to set aside conventional limits on competition, but because it could be just the cause célèbre that squeaky-clean criminologist Dr. Alice Blake needs to justify a thorough purge of Ciudad de Cielo’s criminal element. And Nikki is very high on Blake’s purge list.
In fact, there’s more going on than a simple gang war and both crooked cop and idealist investigator will be hard put to survive it…
--Marshal Zeringue
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