There’s a lot going on, and Coe marshals it all with ingenious ease ... Coe’s subject may be inertia and nostalgia, but The Proof of My Innocence is full of energy. It’s a madcap caper, a sideways memoir, a tricksy jeu d’esprit that is also a quiet defence of fiction in a post-truth age, and enormous fun to read.

One of the many pleasures of reading Jonathan Coe derives from his skill in organizing a large cast of characters, whose activities can sound congested in summary, but never seem so on the page. The Proof of My Innocence, Coe’s fifteenth novel, is an excellent example. The prose strides along with a mature confidence, combining level-headed analysis and droll satire with a strong narrative drive as it both celebrates and investigates distinct fictional genres. The result is an intriguing whodunnit that marries literary/philosophical speculations about the nature of reality with a condemnation of recent right-wing shenanigans.

Coe has written a typically astute, state-of-the-nation tale and fused it with, of all things, a murder mystery ... Coe transforms his narrative and ingeniously and entertainingly serves up three novels for the price of one ... There is so much going on that, by rights, it shouldn’t work. In fact, this brilliant novel works wonders.

The majority of the novel is devoted to [Phyl's] three writing exercises ... This ploy comes off best in the first section, a pastiche of soft-boiled mysteries often categorized as “cozy crime" ... Coe’s strategy is less effective in the following section ... Things break down comprehensively with the third manuscript, a foray into autofiction ... The Proof of My Innocence certainly falls short of total success. Coe’s light touch is overexerted, the conceptual intricacy undermined by a slight laziness when it comes to descriptions and observations, jokes and conceits. But the novel is part of a larger project, and the deficiencies of a single book can do nothing to obscure the validity of his ambition.

A more serious examination of literature’s power and limitations than the mixture of whodunit and political chronicle in which it is wrapped at first suggests ... Diverting and instructive ... A deft tracing of the history of American conservatism and its arrival in the UK.

Because the whodunnit is constructed with great skill and extends into the other sections, I suspect Coe’s novel will be remembered primarily as a mystery, whether he intended this or not. Had the culprit and the crime been less intriguing, the other two genres might have asserted themselves more, and the framing of the whole thing might stand more clearly in the memory. Instead, the reader is drawn most by the comforts of cosy crime ... These two younger characters, Rashida and Phyll, never quite live and breathe properly. Instead, they read as if they’ve been assembled from opinion pieces on millennial trends ... Some might only tolerate the hectic, nearly up-to-date politics or the quick and easy cultural comments, but they will be able to enjoy Coe’s novel as a book about books, because it is genial and gameful enough to be treated that way. If you turn your head and squint to read the novel, it won’t mind.

This is a thinly disguised polemic. But Proof tries to cover for itself by putting every character up for ridicule, not just the bloodsucking factional Tory right ... And Coe captures some moments well in his famous set pieces: the queue to see the Queen lying in state resonates. But a particular tirade from one of the younger characters — about the unfairness of the housing market, the election of Trump, Brexit, the broken social contract between young and old — could have been found in the Guardian opinion pages in the 2010s. The result is a chronologically discordant universe ... It is a shame that the intellectual scaffolding of Proof is so flimsy ... Because within the tedious polemic there is a great whodunnit. It is almost worth enduring Proof’s tawdry politics for it alone. Coe knows how to write a novel: it is well paced, he makes complex plots look easy, he has a way of marshalling a large cast of characters that never feels contrived, the prose is pleasant and not invasive, and he is — rare for a novelist — funny. But Coe’s skills are thwarted by Proof’s anti-establishment foot stomping.

Quality-control of humor has never been Coe’s forte and while his novel has deft ironies, it’s also lumbered with heavy-handed facetiousness ... Elsewhere Coe is on engaging form. Scenes drawing on his experience as a state-school boy in the public school-saturated Cambridge of 50 years ago crackle with adroitly aimed indignation ... The result often sizzles with satiric and entertaining brio.

Coe...presents a clever whodunit shaped by his trademark razor-sharp wit and skewering social-political commentary ... Coe brilliantly plays with the tropes of the genre while slyly poking fun ... The stories within the story are told in the manner of cozy mysteries, dark academia, and autofiction with winks and nods aplenty, all of which masterfully advance the plot with misdirection ... A smart yarn with biting humor, ingenious clues, and a satisfying twist.