The Proof of My Innocence
Author: Coe, Jonathan
ISBN: 9781405962414
Publisher: Penguin UK
Year first published: 06 Jan 2026
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback / softback
Darting between decades, perspectives and countries, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE is a wickedly funny political murder mystery with a big heart - from the best-selling, beloved and prize winning author
Post-university life doesn't suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere.
That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He's been investigating a radical think tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that's been scheming to push the British government in an ever more extreme direction. When he follows this story to a conference in a rambling old hotel deep in the Cotswolds, events take a bizarre and sinister turn. Soon he is caught up in a world of cryptic clues, secret passages and, eventually, murder.
In the end, despite the efforts of a suitably eccentric detective, it falls to Phyl herself - ably assisted by Chris's outspoken adopted daughter Rashida - to look for answers to the fatal mystery. But will they lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?
ISBN: 9781405962414
Publisher: Penguin UK
Year first published: 06 Jan 2026
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback / softback
Darting between decades, perspectives and countries, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE is a wickedly funny political murder mystery with a big heart - from the best-selling, beloved and prize winning author
Post-university life doesn't suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere.
That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He's been investigating a radical think tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that's been scheming to push the British government in an ever more extreme direction. When he follows this story to a conference in a rambling old hotel deep in the Cotswolds, events take a bizarre and sinister turn. Soon he is caught up in a world of cryptic clues, secret passages and, eventually, murder.
In the end, despite the efforts of a suitably eccentric detective, it falls to Phyl herself - ably assisted by Chris's outspoken adopted daughter Rashida - to look for answers to the fatal mystery. But will they lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?
