Who's who in hell - Robert Chalmers

Uproariously funny and achingly moving, this is a gripping debut novel about the tragicomedy of life.Random events and chance encounters lead Daniel Linnell down strange paths. When he loses his job as an amateur therapist, he stumbles onto the eccentric pages of a big London daily and hooks up with Laura - a feisty American girl who spends Saturdays parachuting. One night, Daniel has the ingenious idea to write Who's Who in Hell - a mammoth compendium of the evil and the damned. It takes him and Laura away from their cosy North London neighbourhood, deep into the backwaters of Kansas and the bosom of Laura's dysfunctional family, and back again. Bold and ambitious, this is a novel about life's perverse deceptions and its ability to slap you in the face, just when you're feeling at your most secure. Robert Chalmers has an uncanny eye for the absurd details of the everyday and an overarching tragic vision. Who's Who in Hell establishes him immediately as one of the most original voices in British contemporary fiction.