House of Rumour — Jake Arnott

Spies, science-fiction writers, and new wave icons populate this dazzling novel, which U.K. critics have already compared to such modern classics as Don DeLillo's Underworld.

According to the Guardian: “The House of Rumour perhaps most resembles The Da Vinci Code, rewritten by an author with the gifts of characterisation, wit, and literacy.”

Jake Arnott's decade-spanning, continent-hopping novel mixes fascinating real-life figures with fictional characters as it moves briskly from WWII spy intrigue (featuring Ian Fleming) and occultism (Aleister Crowley) to the West Coast pulp science-fiction set (Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein -- even L. Ron Hubbard) and the '80s U.K. new wave music scene.

Larry Zagorski, a S.F. writer turned U.S. fighter pilot, searches for connections between what seem like disparate events while conspiracy theories begin to suggest the possibility of a single force behind them.

Jake Arnott has written smart, best-selling crime fiction in the U.K. for years, but The House of Rumour marks an exciting shift -- it's a genre-melding modern classic.