Stop All the Clocks
A Novel
"Stop All the Clocks is a cloak-and-dagger thriller reminiscent of Graham Greene and William Gibson—a nimble novel brimming with big ideas, a summer page-turner whose intrigue lies in how technological progress interfaces with human hubris."—Holiday Dmitri, Los Angeles Review of Books
A Thrilling Debut that Explores the Profound Mysteries of Life in the Digital Age
Mona Veigh was feeling burnt out from the tech world—and life in general. Following the death of her unconventional colleague, Avram Parr, and the collapse of her AI company that left her a hefty cash-out, Mona retreated to her home on Roosevelt Island, free to toss her phone into the East River and curl up with a good book, forever.
However, strange occurrences intrude on Mona's permanent vacation and thrust her back into the world. Colleagues from her former company begin to track her down and let on that there may be more to Avram Parr’s death than meets the eye. They all seem to believe that Mona possesses the crucial information about Avram that they seek, or, if not Mona, then her creation, Hildegard—an oracle-like bot that produces eerily prophetic poetry.
Stop All the Clocks is a rare literary thriller where the crux of the whodunnit isn't a person but modern life itself, where the conspiracy lies within the dark magic of digital technology—the ones and zeroes to which everyone is beholden—and the motive is the beguiling power of the words on the page.
Noah Kumin is the founder and editor of the Mars Review of Books, the world's premier outsider book review. He received a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA in fiction from NYU, where he was advised by the late Martin Amis. He is the author of The Machine War, a philosophical history of computing. His next nonfiction work, The Mystagogues, will examine occult secrets in the work of five mysterious twentieth-century writers.
