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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Golden Needle, April 10, 2010
"Buyout" tells us the story of Martin Kindred, a California man whose white-collar job bores and stifles him. Seemingly out of nowhere, he is offered the opportunity to take charge on a project. Specifically he's asked to become to spokesperson for a new corporate-run program of "buyout". California inmates serving a life sentence without parole are given to chance to give millions of dollars to any person or charity they wish. The trade-off: the inmate must allow the company to execute them (the so-called "Golden Needle") within forty-eight hours. Killing these prisoners saves the company many more millions of dollars (since the average prisoner serving a life sentence serves sixty years behind bars.)
Martin's personality is what drew me into the book. He is not a fearless hero or hyper-intelligent skeptic. Martin is an idealist in heart and forces himself to believe that buyouts are morally justified, even as his friends and family begin to voice their doubts.
Without giving too much away, the book's basic question becomes this: how hard is it to distance yourself from a cause or a belief you've committed yourself to, even when you know that clinging to this belief might ruin you? Additionally, sprinkled through the book are the musings of one Walt Dangerfield, a free-wheeling, off-the-cuff podcaster or sorts who comments on the novel's characters and fleshes out the novel's futuristic world, similar to our own in all the worst ways.
I really recommend this book to any college course or reading group that's interested in exploring issues of morality. Recently, my Ethics class used "Buyout" to examine issues of the sanctity of life and capital punishment.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
profound futuristic parable of warehousing convicts, March 31, 2009
In 2040 Los Angeles middle management insurance executive Martin Kindred works for Antelope Valley Casualty, a firm seeking to increase profit margin after a fiscally disastrous 2039. The brass comes up with a terrific reengineering solution to cut government costs and obtain revenue by eliminating overcrowding in prisons caused by the increase over the past few decades to 22 crimes leading to automatic life sentences without freeing the incarcerated. The beneficiaries of lifers with no chance for parole will receive millions if the convict opts for immediate death.
Martin is assigned the task of preparing the prisoner-volunteer for execution and subsequently giving the check to their survivors. The once dead pro-life movement resurfaces in a furor over the cold hearted bottom line execution. Martin finds himself caught in the crosshairs, which impact his marriage. However, his neutrality collapses when his brother the cop is murdered.
Using hyperbole to extrapolate America's second greatest growth industry during the Bush Administration, the warehousing zealousness of convicts (military contractors were first), Alexander C. Irvine provides a profound futuristic parable. The story line leaves the audience questioning the prison system especially privatization in which the government pays by the number of prisoners incarcerated. BUYOUT is a well written dark winner using trend analysis exaggerated into the future to provide a solution to America's fondness for prison warehousing
Harriet Klausner
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A thought-provoking idea and a great character., March 25, 2011
With great characters and a makes-ya-think central idea in a very viable near-future, Alex Irvine has written a book that caught me off guard. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed this title by an author I'd sadly never heard of. My thanks to Spectra for sending me the book in a giveaway that I won on their Facebook page.
I see Buyout as two types of books at once. First, it's an idea book. In the year 2040, the company Nautilus has pioneered a radical and controversial new way to deal with overcrowded prisons and the high costs of imprisoning those serving life without parole: offer them a buyout. Pay them to take the "Golden Needle" and end their lives. They receive a sum of money based on the expected would-be costs of their life imprisonment, and they get to decide how to distribute this money anyway they wish though they are encouraged to use it as a means to atone for their crimes. Donate it to charity. Give it to the family of your victims. Setup a college fund for needy kids. But opponents to buyouts see this as placing a monetary value on human life. And they're not exactly wrong, in my opinion. See, it's a big idea.
The second type of book I see this as is a character study. With many rules and restrictions that buyouts need to precisely follow, Martin Kindred is the man in charge of choosing viable candidates for buyouts and for making sure that they go by-the-book. And as a by-the-book kinda guy, he's perfect for the job. We get to see Martin go through a lot of hard times. His marriage is crumbling. His position with Nautilus is putting him and his family in the spotlight and not in a good way. We learn that his career decisions have made him a perpetual outsider to his family of career cops. And then someone close to him gets murdered. We also see just how far a person might go, what rules they may break, for the sake of friendship.
Make it a thriller by throwing a mystery in there to tie it all together and you have one really good book. I suppose there could have been a bit more tension and the pace could have been faster (key features of a thriller, right?) but those are the only possible complaints in my opinion. And the strengths FAR outweigh any weaknesses. I'm glad to have lucked my way into this book. I'm looking forward to reading some of Irvine's work that I've already missed and to see what he does in the future.
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