Free Edie Investigates by Nick Harkaway Page B

for self-education.”
    “In first aid and disease,” mutters Joe Spork.
    “And in more spiritual things. The universe teaches us about God, Joseph.”
    “Not cats. Or, not that cat.”
    “All things are lessons.”
    And this is so close to something Grandpa Spork once said that Joe Spork, even after a sleepless night and a bad cat morning, finds himself nodding.
    “Thanks, Ari.”
    “You are welcome.”
    “I still want cat poison.”
    “Good! Then we have much to teach one another!”
    “Goodbye, Ari.”
    “
Au revoir
, Joseph.”

NICK HARKAWAY
    Nick Harkaway was born in Cornwall in 1972. He studied philosophy, sociology and politics and Clare College, Cambridge, and then worked in the film industry. His fiction debut was
The Gone-Away World
. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

ALSO BY NICK HARKAWAY
    The Gone-Away World
Angelmaker

EDIE’S ADVENTURES CONTINUE IN NICK HARKAWAY’S NEW NOVEL ,
ANGELMAKER
, COMING MARCH 20, 2012, FROM KNOPF
    Joe Spork spends his days fixing antique clocks. The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly existence is suddenly upended when Joe activates a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism. His client, Edie Banister, is more than the kindly old lady she appears to be—she’s a retired international secret agent. And the device? It’s a 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the British government and a diabolical South Asian dictator who is also Edie’s old arch-nemesis. On the upside, Joe’s got a girl: a bold receptionist named Polly whose smarts, savvy and sex appeal may be just what he needs. With Joe’s once-quiet world suddenly overrun by mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realizes that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago and pick up his father’s old gun …