The story begins as physicist Dr. Alexander Hoffmann, an American expat living in Switzerland, and the founder of his eponymous hedge fund, receives a first edition copy of Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

The next morning Hoffman proceeds to his company, where his charismatic CEO Hugo Quarry is pitching a new investment to the firm's potential and existing clients.

They seek to utilise Hoffmann's genius with algorithms into a system, called VIXAL-4, to provide market data to generate successful hedges.

At the hedge fund, VIXAL begins assuming a level of risk considered unsustainable by the human staff, and Quarry fires Rajamani for insubordination.

Writing in The Guardian, literary critic Mark Lawson called the novel gripping, and described it as "a speedy read, [which] is the appropriate medium for a story in which many of the key events... take place in milliseconds".

[1] The Observer called it "thoroughly enjoyable",[2] while Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph wrote that it is "frightening book, of course, as, with its title, it intends.

[4] The film was never made, and on 5 February 2020, it was announced that Sky Studios and Left Bank would instead adapt the novel for television as a 4-part limited series, starring Josh Hartnett, Leila Farzad, Arsher Ali, and Grégory Montel.