Sebastian Faulks’s new novel is a bolt from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, heart-wrenching, and funny, in the deepest shade of black.

Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, he rises without trace in Thatcher’s England and scorches through the blandscape of New Labour.

In the course of his brief,... (read more)