The Algorithm: The Complete Duology
(2026)(A book in the Harry Poole series)
An omnibus of novels by Tim Heath
An algorithm has been paying unknown authors money they never earned. Every one of them is dead. Harry Poole is the first to say no.
Two complete novels. One story, told in two halves - the second built entirely on the first.
2024
Harry Poole has published sixteen books and sold almost nothing. He writes in the mornings and works at The Bagel Stop in the afternoons, and his father-in-law has never once pretended to approve of him.
Then the sales start.
They come every day, and they do not stop. But every one of them originates in London. The rank never moves. No review ever appears. No reader ever makes contact.
By the time Harry understands what he is looking at, he has a name, and the name leads to a list. Eight authors, one for each of the last eight years. Every one of them took the money. Every one of them was dead inside six months, in an accident nobody could have predicted, involving something new they had just bought.
There is one thing none of the eight ever did. Harry does it. He deletes his bank details so the money cannot reach him - and by December there is over half a million pounds sitting in an account he refuses to touch.
On the first of January, the balance vanishes.
2025
Harry lies to almost everyone in this book.
He disappears for days and will not say where. He looks his oldest friend in the face and tells him something that is not true. The woman closest to him screams at him across a Las Vegas hotel room and tells him not to bother coming home.
For two thirds of this novel he appears to be the villain of his own sequel.
He is not. Almost nothing you see is what it looks like, and every misdirection in it is deliberate and paid off. Readers who nearly gave up in the middle have said the ending changed the whole book. Read it knowing that, and read it twice.
Read 2024 first. The second novel is built on the first and will not work cold.
For readers of Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot and Daniel Suarez's Daemon.
Genre: Thriller
Two complete novels. One story, told in two halves - the second built entirely on the first.
2024
Harry Poole has published sixteen books and sold almost nothing. He writes in the mornings and works at The Bagel Stop in the afternoons, and his father-in-law has never once pretended to approve of him.
Then the sales start.
They come every day, and they do not stop. But every one of them originates in London. The rank never moves. No review ever appears. No reader ever makes contact.
By the time Harry understands what he is looking at, he has a name, and the name leads to a list. Eight authors, one for each of the last eight years. Every one of them took the money. Every one of them was dead inside six months, in an accident nobody could have predicted, involving something new they had just bought.
There is one thing none of the eight ever did. Harry does it. He deletes his bank details so the money cannot reach him - and by December there is over half a million pounds sitting in an account he refuses to touch.
On the first of January, the balance vanishes.
2025
Harry lies to almost everyone in this book.
He disappears for days and will not say where. He looks his oldest friend in the face and tells him something that is not true. The woman closest to him screams at him across a Las Vegas hotel room and tells him not to bother coming home.
For two thirds of this novel he appears to be the villain of his own sequel.
He is not. Almost nothing you see is what it looks like, and every misdirection in it is deliberate and paid off. Readers who nearly gave up in the middle have said the ending changed the whole book. Read it knowing that, and read it twice.
Read 2024 first. The second novel is built on the first and will not work cold.
For readers of Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot and Daniel Suarez's Daemon.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for Tim Heath's The Algorithm: The Complete Duology