Coincidence Engine

February 13, 2012
Any book that opens with a hurricane miraculously assembling a working Boeing 737 from old cans and metal scraps in the backwoods of Alabama requires a suspension of belief. The joyfully crafted chaos of Leith's fiction debut (after You Talkin' to Me?) will appeal to adventurous readers. Leith's characters seem dubious as to their missionâsecret agent "Bree thought: what a mess. None of this made any sense." However, Leith canâand shouldâbe forgiven, for while the book's plot is driven by what some might consider metaphysical nonsense, his sharply drawn characters, well-written dialogue, and compelling philosophical ruminations are smart and funny. Rumor has it that a reclusive genius named Banacharski has invented something variously called a "coincidence engine," a "coincidence machine," and a "probability bomb," which has the potential to affect real-world probability. Understandably, a lot of interesting characters would like to get their hands on it. Bree and her "apsychotic" partner, Jones ("My doctor told me to explain it this way: I don't have an imagination.")âagents of the Directorate of the Extremely Improbableâ,are on the case, as well as nefarious arms manufacturers. Both groups suspect British postgrad Alex Smart, who is en route to San Francisco to propose to his girlfriend, of possessing the machine, though Alex maintains his innocence. Leith's strange machine is sure to delight and confound.

February 1, 2012
When a British student comes to possess a physics-bending device, all hell breaks loose on his journey across America. Former Telegraph editor Leith (Sod's Law, 2009, etc.) spins a bewildering tale of cat-and-mouse, theoretical science and conspiracy theories in a novel that sometimes threatens to baffle its audience. A comic thriller whose characters are all deadly serious, the book shows much of the same imaginative verve as Steven Hall's mind-bender The Raw Shark Texts (2007). The pursuers in the book are all chasing Alex Smart, a Cambridge post-grad who has impulsively flown to America to propose to his girlfriend in San Francisco. But strange happenings are afoot around Alex. The young man has inadvertently acquired a device dubbed The Coincidence Engine, which affects the way probability works and grows more powerful each time it works. This explosive effect has attracted the attention of the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable, a collection of Men (and Women) in Black led by the ambitious Red Queen. "Our job is to assess threats to national security that we don't know exist, using methods that we don't know work," she says. "This produces results that we generally can't recognize as results, and when we can recognize them as results, we don't know how to interpret them." We also get a satisfying back story about the engine's mad creator, Nicolas Banacharski, who is loosely based on the reclusive mathematician Alexander Grothendieck. Trying to put things right, or at least turn them off, are Bree and Jones, a level-headed DEI agent and her psychotic partner. In Alex's path, a 737 materializes out of a hurricane, traditional machinery malfunctions and the inevitable frogs fall from the sky. It's a little Gravity's Rainbow with a pinch of airport thriller and a dash of The X-Files, and a dizzying stir. Leith's narrative runs mildly manic after a while, but the dichotomy between his unruffled prose and the mad events at hand ultimately foster a savvy comedic groove.

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February 15, 2012
Free will and fate butt heads in Londoner Leith's (You Talkin' to Me?, 2011) hilarious, high-energy comic tale. When a hurricane ravages the American South, it somehow constructs a 737 airliner out of soup cans in rural Alabama, an event that attracts the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable (DEI). At the eye of the adventure is Alex, a 24-year-old en route from London to San Francisco to propose to his girlfriend. After getting stuck in Atlanta for reasons he's unsure of, Alex begins his westward trek, leaving a wake of flukes that lead Red Queen, an ambitious member of the DEI, to believe Alex unwittingly possesses a coincidence engine that might explain the physics of free will. An unlikely cross-country chase ensues, involving numerous plot points and quirky characters, including undercover agents, a pair of bumbling goons, and a mathematician whose comprehension of improbability nearly drives him insane. A fast-paced, freewheeling novel that will appeal to fans of imaginative social satire with science fiction and thriller elements, Leith's tale raises enormous, if not absurd, questions and responds with laughter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)