51%
My new thriller 51% comes out on April 28, 2026! Meanwhile, NBC has hired me to co-write a TV pilot adaptation. Here’s what 51% is about:
In a future where corporations own everything—including people—one murder could ignite a revolution.
Twenty years from now, the United States is completely privatized. The Big Six syndicates own schools, roads, police departments… even human beings.
When a young immigrant woman—51% owned by the syndicates—is brutally murdered, NYPD, Inc. detective Juke O’Keefe and his partner, crime marketing consultant Haylee Navarro, catch the case. Pregnant and broke, Haylee knows they can’t crowdfund enough from a dead immigrant to pay for basic forensics, let alone their paychecks. But Juke, with his old-school sense of justice, is determined to find the killer.
Their search for the truth leads them to Juke’s ex, a Resistance leader on the syndicates’ most wanted list. As the three join forces, they stumble onto a conspiracy designed to destroy the last shreds of American freedom. To rescue fifty-one percenters—and everyone else—from syndicate control, they’ll have to defeat the Red Queen, the most ruthless, powerful AI in the world.
51% is a gritty thriller about power, justice, and what happens when everything—even people—can be owned.
How 51% Came Into Being
Several years ago I went to see a talk by the TV network executive David Nevins, who said something that really struck me. According to Nevins, the best TV shows are the ones that speak to people’s deepest fears.
As I walked home that night, I thought: what are my deepest fears? The very next morning, I began to write 51%. The novel addresses my mounting alarm about privatization, the rise of billionaires and huge corporations, and the unraveling of our federal government. I used to think the world described in 51% was thirty years away; now I think it’s only twenty years.
Fortunately, that’s enough time for us to save our country and our democracy as we know it. I see the message of 51% as one of hope: people of good will, working together, can indeed make a difference. In every generation some dangerous force has arisen to threaten us; and so far, every time, we’ve met the challenge.
Here’s what other authors are saying about 51%:
“”Matt Witten takes us on a hallucinatory trip into a dystopian near-future in which fire and police departments, once-public hospitals, and even streets have been ruthlessly privatized, services go to the highest bidder, and the indebted sell themselves to profit-making syndicates. Witten’s noir thriller moves at propulsive speed, intertwining beleaguered cops, corporate predators, underground rebels, and AI-driven supercomputers. It is a world whose seeds, Witten suggests, have already been planted.” – Fergus M. Bordewich, award-winning author of Klan War
“51% is a thrilling and adventurous glimpse into an all-too-possible, terrifying future, with characters full of heart who fight for justice against the cruelty of corporate-led AI. I couldn’t put this book down – read it now!” – Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of The Mentor and The Great Gimmelmans
“Sharp, urgent, and impossible to put down. 51% is the dystopian thriller America needs right now. A premise so good I wish I had thought of it.” – Daniel G. Miller, USA Today bestselling author of The Orphanage by the Lake
“Part cop-drama, part dystopian-nightmare, and completely unputdownable, 51% draws us into a near-future society where everything is privatized and monitored. When a young girl owned by a syndicate is murdered, an officer in the for-profit NYPD, Inc., takes on the case—against the urging of his colleagues, as this investigation is not likely to pay out. A thought-provoking and propulsive look at greed, autonomy, and resilience in a world gone wrong.” – Allison Buccola, author of The Ascent
51% is available now for preorder!