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

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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?

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''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