Sam Leith 
The Coincidence Engine [EPUB ebook] 

Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction

»A tremendous novel — droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction» William Boyd
»A superbly entertaining brain-twister»
The Times
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. An eccentric mathematician — last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil — vanishes in the French Pyrenees.
And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in on Alex Smart — a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off with hope in his heart and a ring in his pocket to ask his American girlfriend to marry him.
At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable — an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren»t 100 per cent sure it exists — Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and a very large number of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work.
The Coincidence Engine is consistently engaging — one of the most enjoyable, entertaining debut novels you»ll come across for ages.