This novel demands that we should be impressed: that page publishers just love to smear in back catalogue is almost blackened by its swarm of 'By the same author's. Freeling clearly thinks he can write (be afraid: lives in France, was born and educated in England) and so does the Literary Review: "quirky, combative and a mite discursive".

Quirky covers a multitude of sins. Like splitting a novel into three painfully protracted, almost arbitrary chapters. Like engineering a paper-thin plot around which you can then weave endless (endless!) acres of soulless, characterless claptrap. Like an epilogue so po-faced it should carry a Government Health Warning.

Plot: policeman Castang and his wife and their friends are attacked in the garden one balmy evening. Two of them die. Later, in Biarritz, Castang's granddaughter is seized by local louts, blah, blah, blah. Freeling clearly cares not a jot for plot, so why should we?

Combative? of who? where? when? A Dwarf Kingdom is a show-off book, a look-at-ME kind of a book; a real Madonna of a novel.

And only a MITE discursive? Martin Amis and Will Self and Iain Sinclair are a mite discursive; MIGHT be willing and able to play with language at the expense of narrative drive, but when you're THAT good... Freeling's rambling is irksome, his 'characters' ciphers, his book failing utterly to engage an audience. The vacuum left by this tosh sucks in bizarre, antiquated punctuation, almost Random capital Letters, and irrelevant asides like a Black Hole. It reads like a run of rudderless punchlines:

"Castang might be destabilised (useful word); yes. Enough to take a tale like this seriously; one couldn't rule it out."

Alighting on this particular mode of scholarly aspiration tethered, albeit loosely, to the crime genre is a patronising slap in the face. An obstinate non-joiner he may be, but in this novel Freeling does nothing but insult us. Bad books are one thing, bad books with pretension entirely another.

And dedicating this smug rubbish to your family is one punishment beyond cruel and unusual: this is a singularly dreadful book that you should on no account buy.

For the (rather good) cover alone: 1/2