Shevlin - Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed

N ot many books make me laugh out loud, but The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathon Fairfax is one of them... A comic gem .

Stylist magazine

I t cleverly combines intrigue with comic, astute observation which made me laugh throughout .

The Bath Novel Award judges (2014 shortlist )

Y ou cant help being tickled .

The Guardian

S hevlin was rightly picked up by the literary agency that represents the likes of David Nicholls ... the comic hero is caught up in a murder plot that unravels into a political thriller, which is by turns absurd and engaging .

London Metro

I have an unusually huge number of people to thank for this book, which I wrote through a series of mistakes, accidents and disasters rare even for me .

First of all, thanks to Adam Fletcher, Paul Hawkins and Linn Hart, who were there throughout my weird and mistaken stay in a German stroke ward. I owe them a huge amount .

Im also extremely grateful to my intrepid test-readers: Avery Elizabeth Hurt, Stef Jakobi, Laura Kennedy, Andrew Nelson, John Lenahan, Ben Ross, Emma Rawsthorne, Alice Pott-Negrine and Hilary Jacob .

Then there are the friends who, among much else, let me live in their flats while I wrote some of this book: Adam, Paul and Linn again, Stef Jakobi and Jack Kinsella, Fred Eichelbaum and Sophie Eisentraut, and (almost) Kate McNaughton, Stefan Rother, and Rich Baxter .

Im also grateful to Scott Pack for editing it, Patrick Knowles for the cover, and my friend, the genius illustrator Edward Ward for coming up with the title and the first sketch of the cover .

Thanks to everyone at the Comedy Cafe Berlin for making me laugh .

Finally, thank you to everyone who got in touch to tell me that they liked my first book, as well as to everyone who gave it nice reviews. That really kept me going .

Thank you all .

M onday, London, the year 2000

L ove at first sight is like the London Underground: inconvenient, outmoded, often disappointing and yet still, somehow, the best option .

Jonathon Fairfax was about to discover this on the Northern line. It was 8.42am, and he was being hurled through a tunnel deep underground .

Hup. Um, oops, he said .

He had just discovered that he was standing on someones toes. When he looked up from the toes to apologise, he instantly fell in love. She seemed to fit perfectly into a gap in him, almost audibly clicking into place .

There was something charmingly ridiculous about her, as though she perhaps did stupid voices when no one was around. She had large green eyes, and the soft curve of her upper lip contained more beauty than anyone else managed to pack into a whole face. Her hair fell to her shoulders in chestnut tresses, as though it belonged to the heroine of an old-fashioned book. It licked down over her red scarf and tickled the lapel of her woollen coat .

Jonathon should have said something, but falling in love at first sight is a distracting experience. It leaves little spare brainpower for conversation, which is in any case strictly forbidden on the Tube .

They stared at each other. The air seemed to have become supercharged, despite the light steam rising from the damp commuters all around them .

And then the train stopped. The doors were opening. The driver was announcing, Embankment station, ladies and gents. The competing announcer on the platform was shouting, Please allow all passengers to alight before boarding. And beneath it all, the recorded announcement was intoning, Mind the gap, in its precise, threatening way .

Their eyes remained locked together, despite the buffeting of the people getting off, despite the icy excuse me of the woman who stepped between them, despite the nasty whack on the back of the knees Jonathon received from an unusually sharp-edged suitcase. And then the girl saw the writing on the wall Embankment and she was leaving, allowing herself to be swept away by the crowd, her eyes on his the whole time .

Two stops later, Jonathon remembered that he too should have changed at Embankment. Now he was going to be late .

J onathon would have been nowhere near the girl or her toes if it hadnt been for the newspaper article .

That morning, after arriving on the Victoria line, Jonathon had narrowly missed a Tube at Warren Street. This happened every morning. When the next train arrived, he was pushed on and propelled into a seat by the force of all the people behind him desperately trying to get in. This too happened every morning .

Someone beside him was wearing headphones that broadcast the highest register of the percussion part .

Dum-dum smash, a dum-dum smash, a dum-dum smash .

This was also normal .

Usually, Jonathon got out his book at this point and slipped away into another world. But this morning he couldnt help noticing something in a newspaper. It was the name of the company Jonathon worked for, in a story towards the bottom of one of the inside pages .

Farynxs Chief Risk Officer dies in fire .

Jonathon couldnt help reading on over his neighbours shoulder. After all, the only thing that could make dying in a fire worse would be if your job involved anticipating and preventing accidents. Jonathon expected to die in just such an unfortunate and embarrassing way himself. Or at least, the old Jonathon had expected that. Now, he told himself, he was changing, turning himself into the sort of switched-on go-getter who could understand headlines in the Financial Times including roughly two-thirds of the one on the front page: Nasdaq breaks 5,000 .

Having finished reading the article, Jonathon was suddenly aware that the man who owned the paper was looking at him with an expression of intense annoyance, as though Jonathons eyes were casting a shadow over the page .

Sorry, said Jonathon, reddening .

The man shook his paper irritably, to emphasise his point, and after aiming another stinging glare at Jonathon went back to his reading .