The Coincidence Engine - Softcover

Leith, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408821729 ISBN 13: 9781408821725

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2012

Synopsis

A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician - last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil - vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in on Alex Smart - a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off with hope in his heart and a ring in his pocket to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable - an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren't 100 per cent sure it exists -- Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and a very large number of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work. The Coincidence Engine is consistently engaging - one of the most enjoyable, entertaining debut novels you'll come across for ages.

About this title

Review:

'A tremendous novel - droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction' (William Boyd)

'A superbly entertaining brain-twister' (The Times)

'This is a novel of ideas [...] Sam Leith pulls it off with admirable imaginative stamina, helped along by sharply observed and entertaining writing' (Independent)

'Witty and inventive, like southing out of Hitchcock by way of Carl Hiassen, this tale of mayhem, murder and mistaken identity is a hugely entertaining, freewheeling riff on the paranoid, conspiracy driven American psyche' (Mail on Sunday)

Book Description:

A wonderfully clever and unique debut

Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1408821729
• ISBN 13: 9781408821725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288