Aside from the tragic demise of his entire family in an earthquake, Daniel seems like a regular guy. His decision not to talk much to his work colleagues, because you couldn't really trust any of them, is a little eccentric, but on the surface, all is normal enough. However, it is not long before Daniel is being dragged into police cells for questioning over the disappearance of his wife, and the story veers into a bizarre narrative of elusive meaning. In this strange world, Daniel jacks in his job to wander aimlessly around the streets, trailed by a mysterious long-coated stranger, and Daniel's eerie doppelganger. It then transpires that Daniel's parents did not die under the rubble, but were spirited off in the night after he blurted out their plans to flee the country in the back of a meat truck. In a world where poisonous gossip has the status of hard currency, Calder's tale combines political polemic and a disintegrating moral framework with a series of quirky coincidences. Like the repercussions of the earthquake, the ideas in this intriguing novel resonate long after the end.
