-- San Francisco Chronicle

Now comes his eagerly awaited follow-up, another hilarious chronicle of an unusual dynamic duo--this time chasing after something quite different--and the London papers are even more enthusiastic.  The Thought Gang is an unabashedly comic novel of ideas and uncertainty.  It is a philosophical novel (or perhaps just a novel about a philosopher).  It is also an unusually cinematic novel.  As the Sunday Telegraph said, "There are novels which are crying out so loudly to be made into films that you cannot read them without a cinematic version taking shape in your mind, frame by frame, as you turn the pages.  Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang is one of them."  Perhaps it could best be described as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction crossed with Woody Allen's classic comedy Love and Death.

The setting is France; our hero, a washed-up middle-aged British philosopher named Eddie Coffin. Broke and unsure as to his next meal, he meets Hubert, an incompetent, freshly-released, one-armed robber, and the "thought gang" is born.  Applying philosophy to larceny, these unlikely bandits question the meaning of life, the value of money, and the role of banks as they wind their way from Montpellier to Toulon in search of the greatest heist in history.  Unexpected and volatile, The Thought Gang is the hilarious and thought-provoking story of their travails.

Tibor Fischer was born in London in 1959.  His first novel, Under the Frog, won the Betty Trask Award and was a finalist for the Booker Prize.  In 1993, he was named by Granta as one of the Best of Young British Novelists.  This is his second novel.