Maxwell's Demon

Thomas Quinn's autumn is closing in on him. Five years earlier, Andrew Black, a loose acquaintance of his, published a mystery novel that became a million-copy bestseller and then vanished from view. Now Quinn wonders whether the novel's hero has begun following him. His wife, Imogen, is the one who usually makes sense of things, but she is on the far side of the world, and seeing her through a webcam offers little comfort. As the world around him seems to be fraying, Quinn realises that finding Black may be the only route to answers.

The book blends detective fiction, a ghost story and a philosophical quest into something new. Following on from Steven Hall's debut, The Raw Shark Texts, it delivers similar tension, but it also wanders through wider questions: the hidden force in the alphabet, a love seen through the looking glass, the ties between parents and children, and the search for meaning in a world that grows more chaotic with each season.