Ordinary Thunderstorms: A Novel

“William Boyd seems singularly blessed with both an innate love of storytelling and the talent to render those stories in swift, confident prose.” —The New York Times

From William Boyd, award-winning author of Brazzaville Beach and Restless, comes a stunning literary mystery about crime and punishment: Ordinary Thunderstorms. One of the most accomplished writers of our time, Boyd has written a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.

One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.

The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in a huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down—underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing who throng London’s lowest levels as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. Adam's quest will take him all along the river Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the gritty East End, and on the way he will encounter all manner of London's denizens—aristocrats, prostitutes, evangelists, and policewomen—and version after new version of himself.

Ordinary Thunderstorms, William Boyd's electric follow-up to his award-winning Restless, is a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.

“Boyd has written a crackling spy thriller.” - The New York Times Book Review

“A gripping and smartly crafted spy thriller set against a fascinating and largely hidden episode in U.S.-British relations.” - The Washington Post

“Superbly written. . . . One of the most smoothly readable novels of the year.” - The Chicago Tribune

“An espionage thriller and domestic drama by one of the very best prose stylists and storytellers in the English language.” - Atlantic Monthly

“Impressive. . . . Rich and engaging. . . . Boyd creates the rich spectrum of London with arresting cinematic detail. . . . Boyd gives a harrowing sense of how close and yet how distant the nether life of a large city is.” - Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Boyd has constructed a narrative machine of hilarious, near-impossible intricacy for the purpose of demonstrating that identity is fragile and that instinct, for better or worse, is not. . . . He is a debonair, versatile, casually philosophical literary entertainer—clever and thoughtful.” - The New York Times Book Review

“A thrilling story.” - The Daily Beast

“Boyd is highly adept at doing what novelists do best: exploring the multifarious possibilities implicit in human life.” - The Los Angeles Times

“Charles Dickens lurks in the shadows of William Boyd’s gripping new novel, Ordinary Thunderstorms, which . . . has a Dickensian cast of characters—predators and prey, tycoons and paupers, charlatans and stooges—orbiting one another in the mean streets of London.” - The Wall Street Journal

“William Boyd delivers a multiplot thriller full of twists and turns in Ordinary Thunderstorms.” - Harper’s Bazaar

PRAISE FOR WILLIAM BOYD: “William Boyd seems singularly blessed with both an innate love of storytelling and the talent to render those stories in swift, confident prose.” - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times