The Dying Game

A Novel

By: Asa Avdic

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins, Steve West

A masterly locked-room mystery set in a near-future Orwellian state—for fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Dave Eggers’ The Circle, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games

Do you live to play? Or play to live?

The year is 2037. The Soviet Union never fell, and much of Europe has been consolidated under the totalitarian Union of Friendship. On the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a forty-eight-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: to stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins. . . .

Combining suspense, unexpected twists, psychological gamesmanship, and a sinister dystopian future, The Dying Game conjures a world in which one woman is forced to ask, “Can I save my life by staging my death?”

Critic reviews

“A deliciously creepy novel revolving around a terrific paradigm shift: The job you think you’re doing? That’s not the job you’re really doing.” —Chris Pavone, New York Times bestselling author of The Expats

“Agatha Christie meets George Orwell in journalist Avdic’s unsettling first novel. . . . Avdic not only constructs a fascinating and original plot but makes her imagined reality chillingly plausible.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A high-stakes test of survival and betrayal . . . Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None crossed-pollinated with ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ . . . An unsettling portrait of our possible future.” —Kirkus Reviews

“An Orwellian debut novel that never lets up . . . A heady mix of And Then There Were None and The Hunger Games [and] a supremely competitive struggle for survival.” —Booklist

“Intriguing . . . Reminiscent of classic ‘locked room’ mysteries by writers like Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and P. D. James. But its near-future setting and Orwellian setup make it feel almost chillingly forward-looking as well.” —Bookreporter

“With a scary dystopia core and a foreboding that lurks on every page, this is terrifying stuff.” —Heat

“Resembling Agatha Christie at her zaniest, this fascinating, ever-changing scenario is deftly and grippingly handled.” —The Sunday Times (London)

Couldn’t stop listening

Fabulous novel, really well plotted, fascinating characters. Great to listen to on audio. I highly recommend it!

Intriguing and Well-written!

At the core of this book is a story about family, self and responsibility. The end was a bit abrupt and unexpected, but it was a thrilling ride.

Starts Slow

This is a strange book that took me a little while to begin enjoying. The novel breaks roughly into three parts. The first sets the groundwork for the story—a woman is asked to help test candidates for a very important project by pretending to be the victim of a murder. She will then, from hiding, evaluate them to determine how to deal with the stress of thinking that one of their fellow candidates is a murderer.

The second part is that plot, which quickly takes a “And Then There Was One” turn as more people die or disappear from the island. Nothing is as it seems and no one knows who to trust.

The third part is a series of interrogations in which authorities attempt to discover what really happened. This was easily the best part of the novel. The interrogations are very well done and Audic really brings out the different personalities of the people being questioned. Over the course of the interrogations and a very brief final chapter, onion skin after onion skin constantly gets pulled away, changing everything the reader thinks they know about what’s going on.

It's often tense and there are moments of true excitement. The ending definitely surprised me.

Potential

So much potential. So much back and forth and confusion. I never did understand the world, the referenced war, and more. It could have been something a lot more enjoyable.

boring and slow

I stopped reading after I was 75% done with the book. I realized I didn't care about the plot or any of the characters. too much time is spent on how Anna feels about things. maybe it all comes to fruition in the last part of the book but why bother continuing to read such a boring book?