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“A tremendous novel—droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction.”
—William Boyd, Author of Any Human Heart and Restless.”
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. This piques the interest of the enigmatic Directorate of the Extremely Improbable. Their fascination with this random event sets into motion a madcap caper that will bring together a hilarious cast of characters, including: an eccentric mathematician, last heard of investigating the physics of free will; a lovelorn Cambridge postgraduate who has set off to America with a ring in his pocket and hope in his heart; and a member of the Directorate with no capacity for imagination. What ensues is a chaotic chase across a fully realized, hyper-real America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and conspiracy. The Coincidence Engine is a lively, boisterous debut that heralds the arrival of a major new talent.
“Witty and inventive, like something 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.” —The Mail on Sunday
“Blending elements of a road novel, a spy thriller and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of chance, it is gripping, funny and unsettling.” —Financial Times
“The silliness multiplies across Sam Leith’s pages like fractal rainbows. . . . Anarchic, psychedelic, with a serious delight in paradox. . . . For [Leith], silliness is not camouflage but its opposite: a tantalizing surface that attracts attention and draws it very much deeper.” —The Guardian
“A novel of ideas. . . . Sam Leith [writes] with admirable imaginative stamina, helped along by sharply observed and entertaining writing.” —Independent
“A comic thriller that, in its deliberate daftness, shows how disturbing daftness can be when taken to extremes.” —Times Literary Supplement
1
"They've found the pilot."
Twelve hundred miles away in New York, Red Queen breathed out.
"What do we know?"
"More or less nothing. Hospital sweep sent up flags. Field agents in Atlanta called it in. He's in Mobile. Name of Arno Fisk. I'm headed over there now to talk to him."
"Condition?"
"Cuts and bruises. Some-well. They're saying some cognitive issues."
In the background, Red Queen could hear wind across the mouthpiece of the phone. Behind that, the sound of heavy traffic moving fast: trucks pounding south on the interstate.
"It's not clear. He was dressed as a pilot, but he's not a pilot. There's nothing on him in the FAA database. He was unconscious for some time. What I hear-"
The wind picked up and the next few words were inaudible.
"-consciousness. I need to go."
"OK, go," said Red Queen.
The phone went down in its cradle.
Red Queen's desk was broad and made of dark wood. The top was covered in red leather. It was out of place. It belonged among other antiques-not in this oblong box with its ozonic air conditioning and its twenty-four-hour fake sunlight. There were no books in the room. An uncomfortable two-seat sofa, against the wall, faced the desk. On the other wall there was a locked cabinet. There were no windows.
A corner of the leather surface of the desk looked like it had been chewed by mice. Red Queen picked at the leather with a fingernail for a moment, staring at nothing.
Then Red Queen turned to the computer, waggled the mouse to bring the screen alive, and brought up the Intercept to read it again.
Bree, on the highway, hung up the phone on the timber wall of the Snacky Shack and walked round to the door. It was late morning and the sun, already hot, bounced off the dusty glass and winked at her. She'd been driving for three hours already. Red Queen could wait half an hour while Bree got waffles.
Bree was the only person in the place-an awkward L-shape that had once been a barn, or an auto-shop or something. Formica tables, pairs and fours. Booths lined the window onto the highway and Bree sat in the furthest one of those, with her back to the corner wall. She sat a while, watched the traffic tick past, waited while the waitress finished scratching in her hair with her pencil.
The waitress leaned down by the chef-a good-looking Latino wearing a greasy checkered dishcloth as a bandana-and produced a laminated menu the size of an occasional table. She dropped it wordlessly in front of Bree, left, returned with a clear plastic beaker of iced water, set that wordlessly down, fished a pad from her pouch and pointed at it, expectantly, with her head-scratcher.
"Morning," said Bree.
"Mornin'," said the waitress.
"Belgian waffles," she said. "Three eggs over medium, Canadian bacon, chicken sausage and sourdough toast; two rounds."
The waitress wrote it down.
"You want a side of fries with that?"
Bree's eyes flicked up from the menu.
"No fries," she said. "And no grits."
The waitress looked at her. Bree looked back.
"Thank you," said Bree, and smiled sweetly.
Thirty minutes later Bree was back heading south in the brown Chrysler with the windows up and the air conditioning on, and by...
Anonymous
Posted February 13, 2012
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
“A tremendous novel—droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction.”
—William Boyd, Author of Any Human Heart and Restless.”
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. This piques the interest of the enigmatic ...