The Invention of Sound

Mitzi is Hollywood's best sound engineer for horror-movie screams — because the screams she dubs are harvested from real people in their final, agonizing moments, a practice she inherited from her serial-killer father and continues in his memory. When private detective Foster Gates, searching for his missing daughter, picks up her trail, Mitzi is close to perfecting a scream so potent that anyone who hears it is compelled to repeat it, threatening to spread like a seismic contagion across the country.

Chuck Palahniuk pairs a serial-killer thriller with a satire of sound, media, and mass compulsion, building toward a scream engineered to bring the country to its knees.