Popco

Alice Butler has been receiving some odd messages - all anonymous, all written in code. Are they from someone at PopCo, the profit-hungry corporation she works for? Or from Alice's long lost father? Or has someone else been on her trail? The solution, she is sure, will involve the code-breaking skills she learned from her grandparents and the key she's been wearing round her neck since she was ten. PopCo is a grown-up adventure of family secrets, puzzles, big business and the power of numbers. Twenty-nine-year-old Alice Butler has parlayed her expertise in "crosswords, cryptography, and cryptanalysis"; talents she gained from her mathematically inclined grandparents; into a job at PopCo's Ideation and Design department, where she creates sleuthing kits for kids. At a companywide countryside retreat (aka "Thought Camp"), the CEO selects Alice to help invent a product that will spark a craze for teenage girls. While Alice looks into her past for insight to this inadequately tapped market; and for clues to her own identity; she also ponders a locket from her grandfather that may contain the code to a centuries-old puzzle. As Alice works on PopCo's blockbuster product and decodes the ancient brainteaser, as well as encrypted messages from an anonymous PopCo colleague, she becomes increasingly disenchanted with her employer's ubiquitous branding, advertising and exploitation of young consumers Alice Butler has been receiving some odd messages - all anonymous, all written in code. Are they from someone at PopCo, the profit-hungry corporation she works for? Or from Alice's long-lost father? Is someone else on her trail? The solution, she is sure, will involve the code-breaking skills she learned from her grandparents and the key she's been wearing around her neck since she was ten. PopCo is a grown-up adventure of family secrets, puzzles and the power of numbers. Alice is quietly becoming the star of PopCo's 'ideation' team. Now she's been called to a mysterious 'thought camp' in Devon where they are brainstorming over the toy market for teenage girls. Alice thinks she's cracked it, but suddenly she's not sure she wants to unleash it on the world A topical novel about branding, code breaking, insidious marketing and strangely powerful toys A novel about branding, code breaking, marketing jargon and toys, from writer Scarlett Thomas.