A Conspiracy of Tall Men - Softcover

Hawley, Noah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671038249 ISBN 13: 9780671038243

Publisher: Gallery Books, 1999

Synopsis

Linus Owen is a young professor of conspiracy theory at a small college just outside San Francisco. He teaches graduate-level classes on JFK and gives seminars on magic-bullet theories and how the symbols on the dollar bill reveal the presence of a secret government that is leading the world to ruin.

Linus' marriage is foundering and his wife, Claudia, an up-and-coming advertising executive, has gone to Chicago to visit her mother. But if Claudia is in Chicago, how is it that two FBI agents show up at Linus' office and inform him that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash on her way from New York to Brazil? And why did a man named Jeffrey Holden, the vice president of a major pharmaceutical company, buy her ticket and die beside her?

Enlisting the aid of Edward and Roy -- his friends and fellow conspiracy theorists -- Linus heads across the country in search of answers. Along the way, the trio encounters a legion of disturbing and provocative characters and clues, including an irascible talk show host, a mind-controlling drug, and art emerging link between Claudia's ad agency and the U.S, Government. As their journey progresses, it becomes frighteningly clear they've left the realm of the academic and are tangled up in a dangerous, multilayered cover-up. Finally, deep in the heart of the American desert, stunned by an ominous revelation, Linus sees he has a new minion: to try to stay alive.

With writing that is electric, whip-smart and suspenseful at each turn, Noah Hawley draws us into a deliciously labyrinthine world of paranoia and plots.

About this title

Review:

Book-of-the-Month Club Owen is an Everyman who has all the right questions -- and the nerve to ask them. Hawley's crisp, witty writing gives you a great ride.

The New York Times Energetic and funny...an engrossing debut.

San Francisco Examiner Satirical yet plausible, the plot dances with ingenuity and charges forward on Hawley's way with words -- not often found in a first novel.

San Francisco Chronicle Noah Hawley's writing is vivid and muscular. He speeds it up and slows it down in just the right places, and the portrait he paints of Linus is memorable. [He has a] true gift for characters.

Po Bronson, author of The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest Hidden in the cloak of a conspiracy thriller is a genre-buster of a book, a cunning, artistic, page-turning satire....

Publishers Weekly Orwellian echoes haunt this provocative, tongue-in-cheek debut chiller....A suspenseful, cerebral satire....

Book Description:

With writing that is electric, whip-smart and full of suspense, Noah Hawley - creator and writer of the Emmy Award-winning series Fargo, based on the Oscar-winning Coen Brothers film - draws us into a deliciously labyrinthine world of paranoia and plots.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0671038249
• ISBN 13: 9780671038243
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384