'The novel of liars, lunch and lost knickers'.
E. the novel by Matt Beaumont, was published in 2000 by Harper Collins. It consists entirely of e-mails sent during a few weeks at Miller Shanks, the London division of a very large advertising company, trying to land a Coca-Cola contract (interestingly enough, the first legal page at the front of the book contains a 'Coke did not endorse this book' disclaimer. If I'd been the author, I'd have had that written in large, friendly letters on the cover - that would have increased sales a fair bit - not that book needed it, though).
It has to be said that it's not the easiest book to get into - it takes a fair while to adjust your eyes to reading the name of the sender and addressee of each e-mail, vital to working out who's who. Mind you, when you do get there - the thing is excellently done. I'm not about to blow any plot, but the story is fabulous.
The real joy of the book, though, lies in realising that you know the people in it. We all have, or have known, co-workers like the ones in this novel:
Simon Horne: the creative director who knows absolutely nothing and attributes all his teams' success to himself.
David Crutton: the divisonal boss who gets what he wants by screaming at people and being generally unpleasant.
Susi Judge-Davis (Susi Judge Dredd or The Breadstick): the secretary who won't hear a word said against her boss, and is quietly dreadful at her job.
Lorraine Pallister: loses knickers...
Pertti Vanhelden: boss of Finland office - described at one eye-watering moment as Noggin the Nogg.
Liam OKeefe and Vince Douglas: laddish copywriters sent to Mauritius to film the promo for a TV channel which gets progressively more disastrous.
... and so on. There's a 'caretaker' who's obsessive about people marking the lino with stilettoes, a nerd who works in accounts and always has spare paperclips, and so on. The working out of the plot machinations are well handled, the characters superbly drawn (more so considering the limitations of the format of the novel), and the set pieces hilarious. The Jesus Dasilva e-mail (when a cleaning lady sends a message home to her son in Lisboa) got me on the floor.
The company even has its own web site at www.millershanks.com, which is very funny indeed, and at which you can download the sequel, The e before Christmas.
Great stuff.