This autumn, life is catching up with struggling novelist Thomas Quinn.

Five years ago, his mentor, Andrew Black, wrote a mystery novel that sold a million copies—and then he disappeared. Could it be that Quinn is being stalked by the hero of Black's book? His wife, Imogen, usually has the answers, but she's working on the other side of the world and talking to her on webcam just isn't the same.

Quinn finds himself in a world that might well be coming apart at the seams. If he could find Black, he might be able to discover the truth.

Steven Hall's debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts, won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. It was an international bestseller and has been translated into over thirty languages. Hall was also the lead writer on the bestselling video game Battlefield 1, which sold over 3 million copies in its first week of release. In 2013, Hall was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Maxwell's Demon is his long-anticipated second novel.