Dishonest Days

Dishonest Days is a thrilling, continent-sweeping novel of conspiracy and revenge from the Man Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Kills.

1986, the Laos–Cambodia border. Fourteen women drown in an accident, all of them participants in a drug trial for Panzet Pharmaceuticals. Scattered between their bodies, boxes of Aspinex DP1024, the unstable and highly addictive variant of a painkiller sold by Panzet. Their deaths are covered up, along with the drug’s harmful side effects.

Cuna, Colombia. West Core, an American mining company funds the worst excesses of the Colombian civil war, laundering money for the cartels. The company forces thirty-five Colombian miners to smuggle a cache of emeralds into the United States: their backs are cut open, the jewels inserted into the flesh, and stitched back up.

Edgerton, Wyoming. Peter Norstrom, an employee of West Core, dies of an AIDS-related illness after his employers cut his health insurance in a petty act of revenge. His lover Tom Gellert, researching the impact of long-term exposure to hazardous chemicals at a West Core mine, seeks retribution against the company with an act of domestic terrorism which will trigger a decades-long guerrilla protest movement.

At the heart of all this sit Richard and Patsy Wildemann, the owners of Panzet, West Core and more companies besides, reclusive billionaires who profit from war and disease while laundering their reputations through art and philanthropy.

Stretching from the recent past into the near future, Dishonest Days is an epic thriller which examines the decisions made by people caught up in the waves of history, and what it means to atone for one’s mistakes. It is a novel about blood and emeralds, security and power, perfect for readers of Don DeLillo, Roberto Bolaño and Thomas Pynchon.