A small pharmaceutical company comes up with a drug that will arrest aging. Quickly realizing widespread distribution of this drug could lead to ecological and societal collapse as people live longer and longer, and fearing the backlash if they market only to the super-rich, they find one rich person they know who will keep them financially secure forever in exchange for the treatment.
Having avoided reprising The Postmortal, Tigner jumps 20 years forward in time. The handful of "Immortals" have realized they need new identities. Rather than pay someone to concoct entirely new identities, they hire a man to find loners who are physically similar enough the Immortals can assume their identities.
Of course, that requires the originals to be dead, and one of those originals just happens to be the friend of recently ex-CIA agent Zachary Chase, who begins trying to figure out who is impersonating his friend, and why.
When Tigner reveals that two of the Immortals want these real identities because they're planning to run for Senate and eventually the presidency, I thought we were in a faux-Manchurian Candidate situation. Chase would uncover what was going on, then struggle to convince anyone these up-and-coming politicians were not who they claimed to be, while they put the full weight of their billions to discrediting/eliminating him.
That's not what Tigner does either. Instead, he runs two mysteries (although one is only a mystery to the characters). In that one, Chase and Skylar, a near-victim of the scheme, try to figure out the mercenary handling the replacements' scheme and purpose, and then capture him. In the other, the Immortals figure out someone is picking them off in ways that mostly look like accidents, and how they react to that.
It's an interesting move, especially for how little the two cross. Chase and Skylar never met the Immortals, only the merc who is essentially a (very dangerous) middle manager. The Immortals are only aware of Chase as a brief annoyance, and Skylar as a possible replacement who didn't work out. It's a bit of a play on the double-edged sword of secrecy. The Immortals have kept their gofer in the dark as to why they need the identities, confident that the money they're paying (and the unlimited credit card) will keep him in line. But that also makes him keep secrets from them, lest they cut off the tap, so they have no clue when things go badly for him.
The mystery of who is killing the Immortals isn't really treated as one for us to solve. None of the characters seem to be poking too deeply into it, beyond suspicions of each other, even once they figure out these aren't just accidents. Again, maybe that's the secrecy aspect. Several of them are in their new identities already, and they aren't supposed to know each other. So that makes it difficult to get information, except through more paid intermediaries. It is a little funny that they've eliminated the ultimate end - time - but as soon as they're reminded they can still die in other ways, several of them go into a flurry of panic.
Related to the largely-parallel tracks, I don't like how Tigner writes Chase's chapters in the first-person, and all the other chapters in third-person. It's a little jarring, especially because we know a lot of things that Chase doesn't, so the first-person approach can't pull us into his perspective. He's trying to figure out why this guy killed his friend, what these people wanted with his friend and Skylar's identities, but we already know that stuff.
'"I understand it's not your first choice, but it might be the only way to stay alive until we figure this out."
"Not the only way. There are seven billion people out there. How hard can it be to disappear?"
Aria shook her head, but smiled kindly. "You may get lost in a crowd, but you'll be alone."
Lisa took her oldest friend by the hand. "There's no place more lonely than a coffin."'
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