Ordinary Thunderstorms: A Novel (p.S.) [Paperback]

One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.

William Boyd's electrifying follow-up to the Costa Award-winningRestless,Ordinary Thunderstormsis a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the seamy underbelly of every city.

Boyd has constructed a narrative machine of hilarious, near-impossible intricacy for the purpose of demonstrating that identity is fragile and that instinct, for better or worse, is not. . . . He is a debonair, versatile, casually philosophical literary entertainerclever and thoughtful.Charles Dickens lurks in the shadows of William Boyds gripping new novel,Ordinary Thunderstorms, which . . . has a Dickensian cast of characterspredators and prey, tycoons and paupers, charlatans and stoogesorbiting one another in the mean streets of London.Boyd is highly adept at doing what novelists do best: exploring the multifarious possibilities implicit in human life.William Boyd delivers a multiplot thriller full of twists and turns inOrdinary Thunderstorms.A thrilling story.Impressive. . . . Rich and engaging. . . . Boyd creates the rich spectrum of London with arresting cinematic detail. . . . Boyd gives a harrowing sense of how close and yet how distant the nether life of a large city is.