Boxer, Beetle

Kevin is a strange dude. He smells like fish – an actual medical condition, he collects Nazi memorabilia and he never leaves his house, except for running errands for the sinister and mysterious Grublock. Bizarre set-up? Check. Brisk follow-on? Check. The action moves quickly with Grublock and a private investigator being murdered, a boxer named Seth Roach getting involved, and the other titular MacGuffin, a beetle. Kevin must investigate a correspondence between Adolf Hitler and a eugenics-obsessed entomologist, Dr Erskine, and how they relate to boxers, beetles.

The novel flits between the framed narrative of Kevin’s search for the truth, for answers and his imprisonment at the hands of heavies and post-modern flights of fancy into the nature of invented languages, dissonant music and the problem with new towns, all of which show a self-assured knowing tone, in control of when to turn on the structured narrative and when to segue into whimsy.

The plot is breezy, frivolous and well-constructed in its anti-realist ‘caper’ setting. Through colourful characters like Welsh hitmen and strange Rabbis, Kevin’s bewilderment as he crawls deeper into the rabbit hole and the rich language, Boxer, Beetle is an impressive and confident debut novel.