“Peppered with startlingly original similes, it’s not for the faint-hearted or prudish. This is high-octane writing, a real hurricane of a novel.” – Daily Mail

“[A] modern picaresque [of] sheer vibrancy. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrific and usually a bit of both.” – Press Association

“Dog Binary is intense, underscored with a terrible sense of foreboding, and the fragmented way Manny processes information from the outside world and combines it with his own traumas makes reading it an almost hallucinatory experience.” - Herald Scotland

The radio’s on. The window’s open. The only difference
tonight, the temperature outside. Everything else, it’s
just the same: the paint on my hands, the alcohol in my
bloodstream and Jabba, down the hallway, lying there
collapsed, making more money unconscious than I have
on my knees in three days.

So begins Alex Macdonald’s extraordinary, unforgettable novel Dog Binary.

About the big, louche, broken-down city that’s London, amongst tattooed prostitutes, botched robberies and misdirected murders, Manny is on the slide.

In the council flat he shares with Jabba – an obese hedonist awaiting alien intervention – he’s reading letters addressed to a previous tenant which detail the plight of Elijah, a pensioner. Manny buys a gun and a silencer. His extreme attempt to rectify things for Elijah is witnessed by Vernon Prendergast, a sinister narcoleptic, who proceeds to haunt the periphery of Manny’s life like a strange bad orbiting moon.

Manny's love for Svetlana might just save him.

His disdain for his chain-smoking mother and his childhood slaughter of her Mexican-hairless dog might scupper him entirely.

Put Charles Dickens, Chuck Palahniuk and DBC Pierre into a blender.

Press the button.

Try not to get your clothes dirty…

Alex Macdonald has worked in the film business as a scenic artist/scenic painter for the last 15 years. His art is represented in the UK and America by major galleries. Dog Binary is his first novel. He lives in London.

Fiction (FA)
Published: 14th June 2011
• Hardback, ISBN 9781907616280, £14.99
• E-book, ISBN 9781907616495, £7.99
Agent: William Morris Endeavour
Rights Held: World all formats