Charlie Fairburn, successful screenwriter, ex-husband and absent father, has been given six months to live. He resolves to stake half his fortune on a couple of turns of the roulette wheel and, to his agent`s disgust, to write a novel - about death. In the casino he meets his muse. Charlie grows as addicted to writing fiction as she is to gambling. His novel is set on a train and involves a group of characters (familiar to readers of St Aubyn`s earlier work) who are locked in a debate about the nature of consciousness. As this train gets stuck at Didcot, and Charlie gets more passionately entangled with the dangerous Angelique, A Clue to the Exit comes to its startling climax. Exquisitely crafted, witty and thoughtful, Edward St Aubyn`s dazzling novel probes the very heart of being. `Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation` Alan Hollinghurst