An Ethical Guide To Murder
The darkly twisted debut thriller of the year
Published on 16. January 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-1-3985-3441-4 (ISBN)
Description
'[A] belting debut . . . This is high-concept, high-octane, hi-jinks and I'm here for it' Maz Evans
How to Kill Your Family meets The Power in this entertaining and thought-provoking read, that asks:
If you had the power between life and death, what would you do?
Thea has a secret.
She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them.
Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another - something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out.
Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead.
Thea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can't help but sometimes use it for her own benefit.
Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job.
Creating an 'Ethical Guide to Murder' helps Thea to focus her new-found skills.
But as she embarks on her mission to punish the wicked and give the deserving more time, she finds that it isn't as simple as she first thought.
How can she really know who deserves to die, and can she figure out her own rules before Ruth's borrowed time runs out?
'Relatable, poignant, and filled with unexpected twists, An Ethical Guide to Murder is near-impossible to put down. I was hooked all the way up to the ending, which I can't stop thinking about. A must-read for 2025' Jenny Hollander
'An Ethical Guide to Murder is a fabulous book! Jenny Morris has taken the "with great power comes great responsibility" concept and applied it to someone who struggles to be responsible for her own laundry. Thea is a relatable, messy character whose trials and tribulations kept me laughing all the way to the emotional gut punch. What a marvellous debut!' Alice Bell
'An Ethical Guide to Murder is the best type of book - one that's as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. With Thea, Jenny Morris has created one of the most interesting characters that I've read in a long time' Kellye Garrett
How to Kill Your Family meets The Power in this entertaining and thought-provoking read, that asks:
If you had the power between life and death, what would you do?
Thea has a secret.
She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them.
Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another - something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out.
Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead.
Thea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can't help but sometimes use it for her own benefit.
Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job.
Creating an 'Ethical Guide to Murder' helps Thea to focus her new-found skills.
But as she embarks on her mission to punish the wicked and give the deserving more time, she finds that it isn't as simple as she first thought.
How can she really know who deserves to die, and can she figure out her own rules before Ruth's borrowed time runs out?
'Relatable, poignant, and filled with unexpected twists, An Ethical Guide to Murder is near-impossible to put down. I was hooked all the way up to the ending, which I can't stop thinking about. A must-read for 2025' Jenny Hollander
'An Ethical Guide to Murder is a fabulous book! Jenny Morris has taken the "with great power comes great responsibility" concept and applied it to someone who struggles to be responsible for her own laundry. Thea is a relatable, messy character whose trials and tribulations kept me laughing all the way to the emotional gut punch. What a marvellous debut!' Alice Bell
'An Ethical Guide to Murder is the best type of book - one that's as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. With Thea, Jenny Morris has created one of the most interesting characters that I've read in a long time' Kellye Garrett
Reviews / Votes
'A wonderfully hooky premise with the emotional depth to back it up, An Ethical Guide to Murder is a stellar debut from Jenny Morris. The Trolley Problem for the Uber age' Callum McSorley, author of Squeaky Clean, winner of the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year 2024'A darkly compelling and brilliantly original take on power, morality, and consequence. Thea's extraordinary gift is both a blessing and a curse, and watching her navigate the blurry line between justice and vengeance makes for an absolutely gripping read. With razor-sharp prose and wonderfully relatable characters, Morris asks the ultimate question: if you had the power of life and death, how far would you go? I couldn't put it down' Amanda Cassidy, Irish Times Bestselling author of The Perfect Place
'You do not want to miss this! A fresh, humorous yet thought-provoking tale of one ordinary, complex woman's quest to put her superpower to good use. Thea's dilemmas of who lives and who dies will keep you pounding through the pages with a smile on your face and an ache in your heart' Graham Bartlett, author of City on Fire
'A deliciously dark, entertainingly sincere Dexter meets Sophie's Choice. Loved it!' Claire Wilson, author of Five by Five
'An Ethical Guide to Murder is a thought-provoking whirlwind of a ride with unexpected twists, well-timed humor, and a propulsive plot. It kept me on my toes until the last page, and I'm still thinking about it!' Gloria Chao, author of The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club and Ex Marks the Spot 'Jenny Morris' remarkable debut novel resembles Naomi Alderman's The Power, but she limits the ability to harm and sets the story in the present, not the future...(a) clever, beguiling novel' The Sunday Times
'This original read is dark, funny and gripping' heat' Book of the Week
'Also out in the middle of this month is Jenny Morris's ingenious An Ethical Guide to Murder (Simon & Schuster (12hrs 43mins), narrated energetically by Nicky Diss. At its heart is a fantastical proposition and an equally unlikely character: Thea, who has the ability to tell how long you're going to live and, if you're not one of the good guys, to subtract your remaining years and give them to someone more deserving. The novel's momentum - and its fun - comes from Thea's qualms, and her consequent attempts to work out a set of rules to govern the use of her superpower' Financial Times, Audiobook round up
'Wittily written, it's deeply emotional at times and I was surprised at my reaction (tears) at several points - but one of those must-talk about books' Belfast Telegraph
'An Ethical Guide to Murder will leave you pondering over deep issues that are often skated over in regular crime novels. What an excellent debut!' Crime Fiction Lover
'A bewitching, deadly and cleverly audacious read with psychological weight...and a dark heart' Buzz Magazine
'An Ethical Guide to Murder is a complex moral dilemma on who really determines what's good and what's bad, do bad people not deserve to live long lives, and whether the power for deciding that should sit with someone that's not even in control of keeping on top of their own laundry! . . . [In Thea] Jenny Morris has written a complex and vulnerable character who is highly principled and incredibly naive in equal measure . . . Jenny Morris has lovely, fast paced writing style, peppered with good humour that breaks up some of the thornier moral questions and makes Thea a much more likeable character than she otherwise could be . . . It's a fun read that could lean more towards cosy crime than a true thriller and might make for an entertaining Netflix drama ( think of The Obituary) and if you're a fan of Bella Mackie's How to Kill Your Family you'll enjoy this debut from Jenny Morris just as much' Interview Room One
More details
Edition
Export/Airside
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
448 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3985-3441-4 (9781398534414)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jenny Morris lives in Crowborough, the home of Winnie the Pooh and an outrageous number of charity shops. She loves a moral dilemma, and writes high-concept crime novels that explore deep philosophical questions like 'How much would I have to pay you to eat a human toe?' She has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and works as a behavioural scientist. When not reading or writing, she enjoys galloping around the Ashdown Forest on a horse, foraging for mushrooms and getting way too intense about board games at the pub.