The new novel from the winners of the 2003 National Bestseller Award has all the advantages of a “[puzzle] puzzle”, plus one more thing - it is acutely social. So acutely that the pictures of our time are involuntarily colored by the ominous reflections of not just the ongoing, but already accomplished apocalypse. The detective intrigue does not let the reader go for a minute - the hero, unwittingly included in some kind of multi-move combination, is put under attack over and over again. Sometimes it seems that he is being hunted by the police, sometimes by a totalitarian sect, sometimes by a childhood friend obsessed with extreme sports, and sometimes the reader is sure that the hero of Gray Slime, like the hero of Angel Heart, himself commits all these monstrous crimes. The denouement destroys all versions and exceeds all expectations.