The Invention of Sound

Chuck Palahniuk returns with the chilling tale of a dark secret and a malicious recording that can make 'the whole world scream at the exact same time.'

Private detective Foster Gates is a father in search of his missing daughter, and sound engineer Mitzi harbours a dark secret that might help him solve the case. The best in Hollywood, Mitzi creates the dubbed screams used in horror films and action movies. But the screams she generates are a little too realistic...

Foster soon discovers the shocking truth behind Mitzi's profession. The screams she produces are harvested from the real, blood-curdling screams of people on their death throes - a technique first employed by Mitzi's father and one she finds herself compelled to honour.

In pursuit of her dark art, Mitzi realises she's created the perfect scream, one that forces anyone who hears it to mirror the sound for as long as they listen - a highly contagious seismic event with the potential to bring the country to its knees.

'Like Edgar Allan Poe, Palahniuk is a bracingly toxic purveyor of dread and mounting horror. He makes nihilism fun' Vanity Fair

'Dark riffing on modernity is the reason people read Palahniuk. His books are not so much novels as jagged fables, cautionary tales about the creeping peril represented by almost everything' Time