The Strange Attractor -

Desmond Cory

Macmillan

1991

192 páginas

6h 24m

ISBN-10: 0333550153

"Jackson?"
"Sir?"
"What's a pundit?"
"I think it's one of those Indian geezers, sir, as comes up on you and strangles you from behind."
"Ah. Yes, that sounds very likely."

With policemen around like Dectetive-Inspector Michael Jackson (aka Wacko Jacko), who, you may reasonably ask, needs a detective? Of the many perplexing puzzles here facing the gentle reader, this is almost the only one that permits a ready answer.
Dobie isn't an Indian geezer-in fact he's a professor of mathematics, and he hasn't strangled anyone form behind, or at least not lately. But when his errant wife and friend are both spectacularly bopped one dark and stormy evening, he is not only a witness to the event but also a principal suspect.
His search for the true mastermind behind these brutal slayings, a sinister figure known to him only as Agatha Christie, leads him to the in-house clinic of Dr Kate Coyle, pathologist extraordinaire, to the hi-tech administrative offices of Corder Acoustics Ltd (where everyone else appears to him to be equally extraordinaire) and finally to the murky depths of an IBM computer, into which he disappears as into a Baskervillian boghole. His mission: TO VERIFY the murderer's identity and CANCEL.
No easy task, with Wacko Jacko hard on his heels and with Agatha Christie spinning an elaborate web of total befuddlement. A previous murder has to be uncovered, and an industrial spinach network (as Jackson would call it) unravelled, and then of course there's a Sinful Susan lurking in the background.
To say nothing of the strange attractor...

Critical acclaim for Desmond Cory:
"A really outstanding novel, remarkable not only for its ingenuity (though there is plenty of that), but also for the high intelligence and literary skill with which its essentially commonplace materials are handled...On no account miss." Sunday Times
"Stunningly unusual and entertaining. Psychological slant convinces but doesn't overwhelm." Sunday Telegraph
"The action is as subtle and ingenious as anything you could hope to find." Daily Telegraph
"Watch out: he does it with mirrors. Yard man tracking missing detective-novelist in Spain using abandoned diary. Or is it? And who's he? Splendid topsey-turveyings." The Times
"Bennett is an intriguing, highly intelligent and exceedingly well-written novel." Times Literary Supplement.