The House of Rumour : A Novel

Mixing the invented and the real, The House of Rumour explores World War II spy intrigue (featuring Ian Fleming), occultism (Aleister Crowley), the West Coast science-fiction set (Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Philip K. Dick all appear), and the new-wave music scene of the 1980s. The decades-spanning, labyrinthine plot also weaves in the Jonestown massacre and Rudolf Hess, UFO sightings and B movies. Told in a variety of narrative voices, what at first appears to be a constellation of random events begins to cohere as the work of a shadow organization--or is it just coincidence? Tying the strands together is Larry Zagorski, an early pulp-fiction writer-turned-U.S. airman-turned-"American gnostic," who looks back on his long and eventful life, searching for connections between the seemingly disparate parts. The teeming network of interlaced secrets he uncovers has personal relevance--it mirrors a book of twenty-two interconnected stories he once wrote, inspired by the major arcana cards in the tarot. Hailed by the Guardian as an heir to Don DeLillo's Underworld , The House of Rumour is a tour de force that sweeps the listener through a century's worth of secret histories.