Electric

It's the middle of February and all over Auckland the lights are going out. The power lines are down, traffic's gridlocked. It's the hottest summer on record and the city is breaking down.

Samuel Usher is already a broken man. He's a data-retrieval specialist, resurrecting other people's pasts while he tries to forget his own. He's drinking too much, taking to many drugs - trying to lead a normal life.

Until he meets Candy and Jules, two drifting mathematicians who make their livings playing games with reality. Each is after the one perfect theory that will make their worlds complete. After being together for five years, neither is getting any closer to their goal.

Things are simpler for Sam - he just wants Candy, and her perfect skin. And for a while, it looks as if he may have what he wants. Then Jules is found abandoned, close to death, in a city street, and Candy disappears. All Sam's left with is a strange list of numbers and three words: Anyway Freedom Goodbye.

In Chad Taylor's remarkable new novel, Sam's pursuit of the truth will lead him into an underworld of chaos and turbulence, where numbers rule and love and friendship collide. Intense, poetic, darkly gripping - 'Electric' is the perfect noir for a new generation.