American Weather - Charles McLeod

Meet Jim Haskin. He's forty years old. He's worth around thirty-five million. He runs his own San Francisco ad firm, American Weather. AmWe's image is green and forward-looking: if your product is upcycled or hydro or vegan, they'll make you an ad. Behind the scenes, though, Jim supports the old captains of American industry; bleach, beer, guns.

But all is not well: Jim's wife, Denise, is in a coma induced by a drug Jim helped promote. A live-in nurse and former Salvadorian gang member helps him care for her. And Jim's only child, Connor, has been sent to a boarding school three thousand miles away after assaulting another student.

Orphaned at 14, Jim and his three closest friends grew up at Mr Hand's Home for Well-Behaved Boys. All have profited from the American Dream. In 2008, on the brink of the Presidential election, the quartet find themselves short on cash and look to Jim for a solution. The scheme he devises brings together a Death Row inmate, pay-per-view television, and most of America's major corporations. Everything is set for it to be his greatest achievement yet.

American Weatheris a remorselessly funny and savage take-down of modern America by an abundantly talented new writer.