COE, JONATHAN — The Proof of My Innocence

Penguin Books 2024 First paperback edition 338 p. SOFTCOVER: (Orig. largep aperback VERY GOOD) 'The premier satirist of great British crapness is on killer form in this gag-a-minute mystery' Observer'A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat. Coe is a master at exploring the pains of modern life' The Times---Post-university life doesn't suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere.That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He's been investigating a radical think tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that's been scheming to push the British government in an ever more extreme direction. When he follows this story to a conference in a rambling old hotel deep in the Cotswolds, events take a bizarre and sinister turn. Soon he is caught up in a world of cryptic clues, secret passages and, eventually, murder.In the end, despite the efforts of a suitably eccentric detective, it falls to Phyl herself - ably assisted by Chris's outspoken adopted daughter Rashida - to look for answers to the fatal mystery. But will they lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old ---'