After a catastrophic motorcycle accident, Jacob Underwood woke up believing he was already dead. This unusual condition has a name—Cotard’s syndrome—and a surprising benefit: Feeling dead makes Jacob frighteningly good at his job. A contract employee of the multinational corporation DBG, he can now carry out his assignments with ruthless precision, untroubled by guilt, fear, dishonor or any moral conflict—the perfect skills for a hired assassin. When a bright young DBG associate vanishes without a trace, likely taking vast sums of money and valuable company information with her, Jacob will pursue her into a labyrinthine network of dark dealings which extend around the globe, and far beyond his understanding.

In Spark, master storyteller John Twelve Hawks spins a riveting tale and delves into what it means to be human inside the modern surveillance state.