Sam Leith

This is a moderately fast paced urban SF thriller. Around the world a series of strange events has been happening, all driven by a device call the Coincidence Engine.

These events come to the attention of the Directorate of the Extremely Improbably, headed by a strange figure called the Red Queen. They, and other organisations are trying to track a guy called Alex who is thought to be carrying the device. As the net closes in on Alex the people tracking him start to bump into each other; and bump each other off. Meanwhile Alex is unaware that he is being tracked, as having delivered his package, he is trying to meet up with his girlfriend to propose to her. As the story reaches its conclusion, more coincidences happen, before the deflated ending drops into place.

Mostly I enjoyed this, it didn’t understand the sub plot with the creator of the Coincidence Engine, didn’t really fit with anything else going on with the story. Whilst the book was well written, it didn’t seem to add up, for example why Alex drove across the states, to meet up with this American girl. I felt that it could have had more complexity and more coincidences to fit with the title. I like the spy / agency part, but Charles Stross has done this better in the Laundry Files series.
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