What is the title of your latest release?
EXTREMITY
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
When a former detective is pulled out of forced retirement for one last case (oh yes, we love a classic trope!), she discovers an impossibility: there are two identical bodies of the victim, both murdered in different places. It just gets weirder from there: think True Detective if written by Philip K Dick.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
It’s a book about excess and billionaires and police, so it had to be a major city, but I also wanted to keep it very true to me and my culture, so there was really no other choice than to set it in London.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Dear god no. She’s an acerbic, depressed mess. She’d have absolutely no time for my nonsense. She’d actually probably be very intimidating to be around, I think.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Intelligent, single-minded, haunted.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learnt a lot more about guns that I ever had. I sent it to an ex-army and generally gun knowledgeable friend of mine and he identified that a rifle I’d picked to murder someone with in an early chapter (I think I just googled “cool rifle”) was actually an anti-tank gun and that my victim wouldn’t have a body left as much as be a cloud of pink mist. After that, I went back and double-checked all my weaponry decisions!
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit each chapter as I go. I need the foundation to be right before I can start building on top of it.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Cheese, in all its forms. Soft, blue, smelly, aged. Give me all the cheese and I am a happy man.
Describe your writing space/office!
I’m a nomadic writer, so it changes: the sofa, the kitchen table, recently I’ve been doing a lot of writing in the bath! I’m not really someone who needs a whole writing routine or space to get words down. Often I’ll record a bunch of me talking while I’m out for a walk and then just transcribe it later.
Who is an author you admire?
So many! Kazuo Ishiguro, Blake Crouch, Nick Harkaway, Susanna Clarke. I could go on and on.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Again, many of them. I still think about the Earthsea books by Ursula LeGuin very regularly. Particularly The Tombs of Atuan, but really all of them can be called life-changing in their own right.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I’m several books into my career now, but the first one was very exciting (Ascension). My agent called me to say we had several offers in and we were going to auction, which was exciting, but before that even had a chance to conclude, he sent me a message saying we’d had a pre-empt for the translation rights from Finland. Yes, the first offer I accepted was for Finnish rights. From there, it all snowballed, but I still remember walking up and down my flat at the time with my wife basically just screaming.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
This changes regularly, and I really read across the genres. I love anything experimental and literary, but also a good thriller or even a romcom. Deep down, I think my heart will always be with science-fiction.
What’s your favorite movie?
The Matrix. I still remember seeing it at the tender age of about 10 or 11 and it completely blowing my mind (and giving me nightmares!). I’ve never been the same since.
What is your favorite season?
Anything but winter.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By surrounding myself with friends, family, and nice food. My happy place is going out somewhere with great food with a bunch of friends and chatting away the evening. I’d do it more often if I could get everyone together, but everyone leads busy lives, so a birthday is always a good excuse!
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
The best book I’ve read this year was All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker which is just beautifully written from start to finish. It’s about 600 pages and I devoured it in two days. It stole my heart completely.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
This is an unfair question because I love all food so much. I’m a huge fan of Asian cuisines, though — particularly Malaysian and Indian influenced food. Malaysian roti paratha might be one of my favorite things in the universe.
What do you do when you have free time?
I read. I go to the gym. I play lots of very long nerdy tabletop board games with friends. I go to the pub and I go for long walks whenever I can. I love walking.
What can readers expect from you next?
There’ll be another novella with Tordotcom coming out in the first half of 2026, and then you can expect another full-length novel from me in the second half of 2026. All of them are in that speculative thriller space, but both lean more horror and weird fiction than Extremity does. For the first, think corporate horror a la Severance, for the second, think underground cults and insomnia. Either way, lots more coming your way!
EXTREMITY by Nicholas Binge
A time-traveling, end-of-the-world police procedural, Extremity is True Detective if written by Philip K. Dick.
When once-renowned police detective Julia Torgrimsen is brought out of forced retirement to investigate the murder of Bruno Donaldson, a billionaire she worked with whilst undercover, she doesn’t expect to find two bodies. Both are Bruno—identical down to the fingerprints—and both have been shot.
As the investigation sucks her back into the macabre world of London’s rich elite, she finds herself on the hunt for a mysterious assassin who has been taking out the wealthy one by one. But when she finally catches up with her quarry, she unveils an entire world of secrets: impossible documents about future stock market crashes, photographs of dead clones, and a clandestine time-travelling conspiracy so insidious it might just mean the extinction of the entire human race.
If Julia is to have any chance of preventing this terrible future, she’ll have to revisit her own past, the terrible choices she made undercover, and the brutal act that destroyed her once legendary career.
Audiobook Narrator- Marian Hussey
Thriller Crime | Science Fiction Alternate History [Tor, On Sale: October 14, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781250373847 / eISBN: 9781250373854]
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About Nicholas Binge
Nicholas Binge is an author of speculative thrillers, literary science-fiction, and horror. His novels include Ascension and Professor Everywhere. Binge has lived in Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong, and is based in Edinburgh, UK, where he teaches literature and works on new books. He is an active member of ESFF (Edinburgh Science-Fiction & Fantasy).
His most recent novel, Ascension, is being published by Harper Voyager (UK) and Riverhead Books (US) in April. It is also being translated into eight other languages and has been optioned for film.
Binge has a deep love for anything weird, anything that pushes boundaries, and anything that makes him cry. He is never happier than when he is with a book.
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