Who's Who in Hell by Robert Chalmers
Uproariously funny and achingly moving, this is a gripping debut novel about the Towards closing time in a London pub, Daniel Linnell has the idea of writing Who's Who In Hell: a mammoth compendium of the damned, whose entries range from the Emperor Nero and the Marquis de Sade, to contemporary figures like Gerald Longworth, a gangster whose enjoyment of violence is only exceeded by his furtive passion for Disney musicals. Daniel is supported by his girlfriend Laura, a feisty American with aberrant instincts and a dangerous attraction to altitude, and by his boss Alexander Whittington, the maverick obituaries editor of a national newspaper. News of the book's publication precipitates a sequence of events that propel Daniel and Laura out of their North London flat, deep into the badlands of Kansas - where they receive a unique welcome from her crazed and dysfunctional family - and back again. Bold, outrageously funny and ultimately wrenching, Who's Who In Hell establishes Robert Chalmers as one of the most original voices in contemporary fiction.