Tom Kendall is a lonely, anally-retentive printer who gets his jollies on a Yamaha organ until one day he finds himself joyfully pitched into the arms of the married Maddie. Elsewhere, the family of Tom’s sister Lucy are the latest selected for the very special attentions of Will Summers, a morbid young house-breaker with a pathological affection for happiness: "She is watching television now, while I am up here fucking her house." One fateful act of violence and tears before bedtime.

Higson sure knows how to power a novel, but heavy plotting leaves a handful of flaws standing proud. Evidence: Summers’ diary (by acceptable circumstance) falls into Tom’s hands, but the new owner’s ability to trace its author is glib. Fortunately our author almost papers over the cracks with an exemplary head-shaking gambit some way in that necessarily redefines the book with delicious effect.

The grasp of jet-black humour is as admirable as the willingness to take a plunge headlong into blood and guts when needs must. And with more restraint, measuring the gross-outs more sparingly here than the protracted brutality that, in its surreal excessiveness, mars both Ants and his most recent, the slack and ill-advised Getting Rid of Mr. Kitchen. The only real problem is that as a novelist Higson hasn’t yet mastered finding story naturally in character. The end is a messy affair that, for all its aggression and insanity, is strangely unsatisfying. And with Kitchen only more of the same - albeit even less thought out - this really is the place to start to see why the great Patricia Highsmith felt able to divvy Higson up a glowing cover blurb.