A Perfectly Useless War: The Future Changed Mid-Invasion

The orders are lawful. The briefings are accurate. The convoy arrives on time.

Caleb is the man who carries out the orders: a quiet operator who keeps finding that the removals work and nothing changes. Mercer builds the process that makes every step defensible. Kline signs what the machine puts in front of her. Outside Reykjavík, Sólveig builds an energy system out of parts nobody can embargo. In a lab in Mexico, Andrés chases a number that will not hold, and finds it comes down to sand.

A Perfectly Useless War is a slow, deadpan procedural about institutions that do their jobs perfectly. It is about the lag between a decision and its effect, and about who is left holding the blame when every step was correct.

Expect dry humor, dense paperwork and very little shooting. Everything works as designed, and that is the problem.

For readers of Slow Horses, 2034 and Red Storm Rising.