Madness Is Better Than Defeat

'Dazzling . . . his best to date' Spectator 'A novel of great intelligence and humour, cleverly structured and brimming with tricks . . . a tremendous rainbow' New Statesman In 1938, two rival expeditions set off for a lost Mayan temple in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a screwball comedy on location there, the other intending to disassemble it and ship it back to New York. A seemingly endless stalemate ensues, and twenty years later, when a rogue CIA agent learns that both expeditions are still out in the wilderness, he embarks on a mission to exploit the temple as a geopolitical pawn. But the mission hurtles towards disaster when he discovers that the temple is the locus of grander conspiracies than anyone could have guessed. 'Wildly plotted, comedic . . . triumphant' Financial Times 'Beauman has a gift: he's a natural comic writer' Guardian