About this item
Highlights
- Linus Owen is a young professor of conspiracy theory at a small college just outside San Francisco.
- About the Author: Noah Hawley is thirty-one years old and lives in San Francisco.
- 384 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Thrillers
Description
About the Book
In this "Catch-22" for a new generation, a conspiracy theorist unravels his own wife's suspicious death on a plane en route to Brazil--when he was under the impression she was visiting her mother in Chicago.Book Synopsis
Linus Owen is a young professor of conspiracy theory at a small college just outside San Francisco. He teaches graduate-level classes on JFK and gives seminars on magic-bullet theories and how the symbols on the dollar bill reveal the presence of a secret government that is leading the world to ruin.Linus' marriage is foundering and his wife, Claudia, an up-and-coming advertising executive, has gone to Chicago to visit her mother. But if Claudia is in Chicago, how is it that two FBI agents show up at Linus' office and inform him that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash on her way from New York to Brazil? And why did a man named Jeffrey Holden, the vice president of a major pharmaceutical company, buy her ticket and die beside her?
Enlisting the aid of Edward and Roy -- his friends and fellow conspiracy theorists -- Linus heads across the country in search of answers. Along the way, the trio encounters a legion of disturbing and provocative characters and clues, including an irascible talk show host, a mind-controlling drug, and art emerging link between Claudia's ad agency and the U.S, Government. As their journey progresses, it becomes frighteningly clear they've left the realm of the academic and are tangled up in a dangerous, multilayered cover-up. Finally, deep in the heart of the American desert, stunned by an ominous revelation, Linus sees he has a new minion: to try to stay alive.
With writing that is electric, whip-smart and suspenseful at each turn, Noah Hawley draws us into a deliciously labyrinthine world of paranoia and plots.
From the Back Cover
Linus Owen is a young professor of conspiracy theory at a small college just outside San Francisco. He teaches graduate-level classes on JFK and gives seminars on magic-bullet theories and how the symbols on the dollar bill reveal the presence of a secret government that is leading the world to ruin.Linus' marriage is foundering and his wife, Claudia, an up-and-coming advertising executive, has gone to Chicago to visit her mother. But if Claudia is in Chicago, how is it that two FBI agents show up at Linus' office and inform him that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash on her way from New York to Brazil? And why did a man named Jeffrey Holden, the vice president of a major pharmaceutical company, buy her ticket and die beside her?
Enlisting the aid of Edward and Roy -- his friends and fellow conspiracy theorists -- Linus heads across the country in search of answers. Along the way, the trio encounters a legion of disturbing and provocative characters and clues, including an irascible talk show host, a mind-controlling drug, and an emerging link between Claudia's ad agency and the U.S. government. As their journey progresses, it becomes frighteningly clear that they've left the realm of the academic and are tangled up in a dangerous, multilayered cover-up. Finally, deep in the heart of the American desert, stunned by an ominous revelation, Linus sees he has a new mission: to try to stay alive.
With writing that is electric, whip-smart, and suspenseful at each turn, Noah Hawley draws us into a deliciously labyrinthine world of paranoia and plots.
Review Quotes
Publishers Weekly Orwellian echoes haunt this provocative, tongue-in-cheek debut chiller....A suspenseful, cerebral satire....
San Francisco Chronicle Noah Hawley's writing is vivid and muscular. He speeds it up and slows it down in just the right places, and the portrait he paints of Linus is memorable. [He has a] true gift for characters.
San Francisco Examiner Satirical yet plausible, the plot dances with ingenuity and charges forward on Hawley's way with words -- not often found in a first novel.
The New York Times Energetic and funny...an engrossing debut.
Po Bronson, author of The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest Hidden in the cloak of a conspiracy thriller is a genre-buster of a book, a cunning, artistic, page-turning satire....
Book-of-the-Month Club Owen is an Everyman who has all the right questions -- and the nerve to ask them. Hawley's crisp, witty writing gives you a great ride.
About the Author
Noah Hawley is thirty-one years old and lives in San Francisco. This is his first novel.