Stickleback (John McCabe Thrillers) Book

John McCabe, perhaps uniquely for an author, is both a research geneticist and a club DJ. His worlds collide in this stylishly engaging debut novel in which science (the title comes from the utterly predictable courtship routine of the stickleback), street life and good old male angst are all energetically combined. Ian Gillick likes routine. Slaving over a database in Birmingham, Ian's job is to track the £300 billion that pass every day through the hands of investment companies in the City of London. For Ian, routines were "cruise control journeys through mundanity"; his way of making it through days spent in a claustrophobic office with an obsessive Star Trek fan and nights usually spent alone. But routines can go wrong. One morning breakfast goes awry--the habitual orange juice, weak tea and three pieces of toast and marmalade just don't do the trick--and things are never the same again. Ian's shabby but, just, in control world is transformed into a sinister and decidedly out of control one. Drink, computers, love and the petty agonies of office life all feature in this darkly amusing novel as Ian finally finds something worth breaking out of his rut for--the perfect crime. --Nick WroeRead More