Abandoned by the man twice in his life, Jack bears his father no love but with little else in his life and the intrigue of Louise, a half sister he would like to fuck, he sets out to fulfil the last commands of Tim Chambers. These lead him to Rome, ‘city of the wolf’ and there he meets the people living with the results of his father’s manipulations.

Chambers is supposed to be a Crowley-style figure but only occasionally do we glimpse his power. Most of the time Joyce is so keen to show us the clay feet of the man that it’s hard to understand why anyone would tolerate him; unless it’s that people credited with ‘magnetic personalities’ and great will attract followers of the opposite material. Their power is in direct relation to their followers’ lack. That’s by the by, as Joyce never gives sufficient depth to the father’s guru/disciple relationships to judge. The key episode is withheld right to the end, and that’s a shame because if we’d known of it earlier it would have given greater significance to characters who simply walked on, said their piece, and then walked off. That it’s all made clear at the end doesn’t remove the disappointing lack of substance in the larger part of the novel.

What does work is Jack’s awkward relationship with his half-sister and her son. Instant family. At the beginning there is much reference to Jack’s former career as a cop where he was noted for having the ‘bobby eye’ - he noticed things too much. After the first section this intriguing theme is abandoned in much the same way his supposed job as a process server is simply there to give him some kind of a job.

There are sections, the initiation in Rome, where both language and content combine into a powerful narrative; but for most of the rest the ideas are there, paraded and trumpeted but they are never blended satisfactorily into plot and character. So much is spouted at the reader rather than left to unfold at its own pace. Rarely does the writing match the previous high standard of novels like The Tooth Fairy. Jack is too straight-jacked, his only way to develop as a character his relationship with Louise or Tim. Neither of which happens. The horror/tension is supposed to come from the power the old man had but he’s exposed as a fraud too often to be effective in this role. More cancerous tabby than grey wolf. Of course, being about invisibility, Jack wonders if his father is really dead: could he still be wandering around pulling the strings on them all, even to the point of getting Jack to bed his Louise? (cue Twilight Zone theme). Sadly, I didn’t really care.