Dr Max Hoffman is a legend. A physicist once employed on the Large Hadron Collider, he now uses a revolutionary and highly secret system of computer algorithms to trade on the world’s financial markets. None of his rivals is sure how he does it, but somehow Hoffman’s hedge fund — built around the standard measure of market volatility: the VIX or “Fear Index” — generates astonishing returns for his investors.

Late one night, in his house beside Lake Geneva, an intruder disturbs Hoffman and his wife while they are asleep. This terrifying moment is the start of Robert Harris’s compelling and timely new novel, The Fear Index. Over the next 48 hours, as the markets edge towards another great crash, Hoffman’s world disintegrates. But who is trying to destroy him?

“Harris is a master of pace and entertainment, and The Fear Index is a thoroughly enjoyable book…”–The Observer

“A fine dystopian parable, especially impressive for the fact that instead of giving up on what really goes on in most banks and hedge funds and making them a mere back drop for money-laundering and ancillary skulduggery, as many thriller-writers have done, his heart of darkness is the thing itself. The drama contains, as he notes in the acknowledgments, ‘Gothic flights of fantasy’–the story reminiscent of everyone from Michael Crichton to Ian Fleming, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. Yet there is an uncomfortable core of reality there..”–Financial Times

We have two copies of The Fear Index in hardcover to give away, signed by the author himself! Would you like to enter the draw to win one? Then follow these easy peasy instructions:

1. Follow us on twitter! If you don’t follow us on twitter yet, you’ll need to pop over to our twitter page and click on the ‘follow’ button to see our tweets. (If you’ve not already signed up for Twitter, the first thing you’ll see on the page is a big yellow SIGN UP! button. It’ll take you about 30 seconds.) If you already follow our tweets then you can skip this step, of course.

2. Tweet the following  text to  your adoring followers before 11am on Friday November 11th:

Tweet to Win! The new Robert Harris thriller, The Fear Index. Signed! Courtesy of @wwwabcnl Find out how: http://is.gd/QauCop

3. Wait. We’ll pick three winners at random from all the tweets. We’ll contact the winners via twitter, and ask for their details and also which ABC store (Amsterdam or The Hague)  they would like to collect their prize from. (We can’t mail prizes out – sorry.  You’ll should be able to collect your prize or send one of your minions to do it for you.) Please read the complete Tweet To Win rules before entering!