A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate close in on Alex Smart - a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable - an organisation so secret, many of its operatives aren't a hundred per cent sure it exists - Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and vast amounts of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work.