Jack Glass

by Adam Roberts

Overview

WINNER OF THE BSFA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Jack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged.

Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, JACK GLASS is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain and JACK GLASS has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits and comes with liberal doses of sly humour.

Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challanges notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom. It is an extraordinary novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780575127654
Publisher:	Orion
Publication date:	07/26/2012
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	733,110
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Adam Roberts is Professor of 19th Century Literature at London University. Three of his novels have been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He maintains at least three seperate critical blogs. He has also published a number of academic works on both 19th century poetry and SF.
Adam Roberts is commonly described as one of the UK's most important writers of SF. He is the author of numerous novels and literary parodies. He is Professor of 19th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, London University and has written a number of critical works on both SF and 19th Century poetry. He is a contributor to the SF ENCYCLOPEDIA.

Editorial Reviews

In the tradition of Swift, Orwell and Atwood—THE TIMES

Should have won the 2009 Booker Prize

From the Publisher

05/15/2014
The tropes of Golden Age mysteries and sf are referenced in this British Science Fiction Award (BSFA) award winner for best novel. Jack Glass is a celebrated and infamous murderer whose crimes unfold across space in three connected stories. Jack's guilt is clearly established, but the stories are surprising "howdunits" raising universal questions. VERDICT This is genre-bending, entertaining, slyly thought-provoking, occasionally bloody, and intellectually challenging space opera.

Library Journal