THE KARMA BOOTH
JEFF PEARCE
HarperVoyager an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015
Copyright © Jeff Pearce 2015
Cover photographs © Shutterstock 2015, Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Jeff Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008101190
Version 2015-02-25
For Blair Cosgrove. My friend, my brother.
Table of Contents
They used the word execute for Emmett Nickelbaum, and even though he was the first to experience the procedure, no one would ever think of him as a pioneer. Emmett Nickelbaum was the first death row inmate to go. He was to be exterminated, eradicated, expunged.
They had a harder time describing what happened after the execution—and what terminology to use for the new arrival.
Emmett Nickelbaum was a thirty-eight-year-old mechanic. Caucasian, born and raised on the edge of Morningside Heights in New York City, back when it wasn’t impossible for a family to rent there, and he stood six foot four and had a build like a massive wall of solid, turn-of-the-century yellow brick. His coworkers at