Post-university life doesn't suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back at home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow's Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He's been on the path to uncover a secretive think tank, founded at Cambridge in the 1980s, that's been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction.
A think tank that's finally poised to put its plans into action. But speaking truth to power can be dangerous - and power will stop at nothing to stay on top. As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress.
But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old ? Darting between decades and genres, The Proof of My Innocence is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain's most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.
