Touch

Claire North has a knack for unusual premises when writing fiction and Touch demonstrates that.  In Touch the narrator is essentially a non-corporeal being that exists by taking over people on touch.  He/she (it’s never clear) was originally human but was murdered.  On death he/she plead for life and found he had taken over the murderer’s body.  Thenceforward she could become anyone she touched, taking over their body while the original inhabitant just sort of loses time until she is gone.  She is not the only one of her kind.  The narrator spends the course of the book fighting a shadow organization that is trying to kill off her kind (or is it?) and the result is an interesting thriller.  

While I was interested in the premise initially by the end of the story I was fully on board as viewing these creatures as non-human parasites that really needed to be exterminated.  So all in all an interesting story that I’d recommend to people who don’t require a sympathetic narrator.