WHEN British author Matt Beaumont began writing “e,” a novel in which the plot unfolds entirely through

e-mails, he had only been wired for a few months.

The now-40-year-old copywriter was forced into logging on after realizing he was missing out on a crucial aspect of office life at the London-based ad agency McKann Erickson.

This was in January 1999, eons after most of the U.S. was

fully immersed in sending electronic missives.

“I’d never used a computer, I had just resisted it,” he says.

But the ad agency was so obsessed with e-mail that Beaumont, a copywriter since 22, had to boot up.

He caught the bug.

Then another first. Even though he had never penned a novel before, he thought back-and-forth e-mail messages would be the perfect vehicle to pen a satire about the modern corporate world.

“I wanted it to be a story about office life,” says Beaumont. “When you’re working at an agency, when you’re there, the outside world doesn’t exist.”

“e” – just released both in Britain and here – tells the tale of an ad agency immersed in a pitch to get the Coca-Cola account.

While that sounds a bit dull to all except advertising insiders, critics have been waxing positive on the book, filled with scandalous affairs, secretarial wars, cocaine-sniffing, blackmail and even a cameo of Ivana Trump.

The drama is all told through page-turning e-mails – doctored, mis-directed and blind-copied.

“E-mail gives us another tool [with which] to be dishonest,” says Beaumont, noting the drawbacks. “It’s there forever. Even if you’ve deleted it it’s still there.”

Reading the book is an unusual experience – e-mail is somehow harder to read on paper than on a computer terminal, particularly when a plot is unfolding.

Attention has to be paid to details: the sender, the receiver, those copied and blind-copied on the message and the date.

Beaumont wondered whether the device would work.

“I was worried about it. Would anyone be bothered to read a book written on e-mail? Or give a toss about advertising? Hopefully, I was wrong,” he says.

“People find it slow and awkward at first, but people get used to it.”

Plenty of films, TV programs and books use e-mail as a way to advance the story line. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks forge a relationship through e-mail in “You’ve Got Mail.”

Even Bridget Jones refers to e-mail messages in her famous diary.

Beaumont’s book isn’t the first to be told in this medium, but he didn’t know it when he began writing.

“E-mail: A Love Story,” by Stephanie Fletcher, is about a 44-year-old housewife who explores the Internet and ends up having some online affairs. The book, published in 1996, was also written in e-mail messages.

With an e-mail novel, the promotional possibilities move into cyber space – the fictional ad agency Miller Shanks has its own slick Web site (www.millershanks.co.uk) leading to an “e” Web site.

Beaumont still claims not to be an Internet addict or a computer geek, but he’s pretty fast on the “SEND” to reply to e-mails.

He’s already tapped out a 22,000 word sequel, which HarperCollins UK will publish it a few weeks on the Internet.

“They have wanted to experiment with e-books for a while and me coming up with an

e-mail novel was too obvious an opportunity for them to pass up,” he wrote The Post in an e-mail.

The follow-up will be sold on a new site from Waterstones, a UK retailer.

“The sequel is called ‘The e Before Christmas,’ [yes, it centers around the office party],” he e-mails.

Beaumont may not a computer geek, but he’s certainly found a place in cyber space.