The Proof of My Innocence

'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? --- 'Full of energy... a madcap caper, a sideways memoir, a tricky jeu d'esprit that is also a quiet defence of fiction in a post-truth age, and enormous fun to read' Guardian 'Deeply pleasurable, and a lot of fun. You emerge from it glowing' iPaper 'Fantastic, wickedly funny and gripping. Coe has written a beautifully crafted mystery that dovetails as a sharp, smart, state of the nation' Simon McCleave 'I was delighted... it's clever and political - while also being very funny' John Self

About the Author :
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen novels, including What a Carve Up!, The Rotters' Club, Middle England and, most recently, The Proof of My Innocence. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Europeen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Medicis tranger and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. Jonathan Coe lives in London.

Review :
Wonderfully accomplished and darkly funny. The Proof of My Innocence is a murder mystery, a satire on Britain's ever right-ward drift, culminating in Liz Truss; and an inquiry into truth and perception. Jonathan Coe gets better and better A brilliant, shrewd, satirical novel – gimlet-eyed, funny, very clever and a searchingly profound look at the state of this strange country of ours. The premier satirist of great British crapness is on killer form in this gag-a-minute mystery - who but Coe would think to structure a book around the abysmal transport police mantra “See It. Say It. Sorted”? A funny, smart and innovative exploration of contemporary British political dynamics A wonderfully farcical and absurd book that puts into perspective the political chaos of post-Brexit Britain Full of energy... a madcap caper, a sideways memoir, a tricksy jeu d’esprit that is also a quiet defence of fiction in a post-truth age, and enormous fun to read Deeply pleasurable, and a lot of fun. You emerge from it glowing A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat . . . Coe is a master at exploring the pains of modern life Endlessly satisfying For many in the UK, the last fourteen years have felt like living in an irredeemably bad novel. How wonderful, then, to mark the changes with Jonathan Coe’s wise and playful reprise of the years in which we lost the plot - and maybe gained some gentleness in its unravelling