The Resurrectionists Michael Collins Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 360pp, £12.99 ISBN 1861591950

Michael Collins is the thinking man's John Grisham. This might sound a slightly snooty way to talk about an author whose previous novel, The Keepers of Truth, was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but, as I am a Grisham fan, it is not intended as a criticism. Collins shares Grisham's skill with plot and character, and his ability to pose interesting moral conundrums. He also writes in a no-nonsense, plain style. As his narrator, Frank Cassidy, notes: "I got a feeling there were only so many stories to tell in life, like all the words had been used up. I found it hard to say anything that conveyed what I was feeling anymore."

Although he currently lives in Seattle, Collins is an Irishman, and while he is superb at the American vernacular, there is a satirical undercurrent that elevates The Resurrectionists. Throughout the novel, his characters watch reruns of famous American television programmes such as The Brady Bunch or Police Woman. Collins suggests that these programmes carry a false weight gained through endless repetition, and that TV shapes our consciousness in a way that life or religion no longer does.

Frank Cassidy is rough around the edges, having spent time in a mental institution. He is involved with a woman called Honey who has two disturbing sons, Robert Lee and Ernie (the first named after the general, the latter after the friendly Muppet from Sesame Street), and a husband, Ken, who is on Death Row for murder. Honey is worried about her husband's desire to donate his organs after his death, and suffers horror-movie delusions that his "hosts" will come back to haunt her.

When his uncle is shot, Frank decides he wants a piece of the old family farm and drags Honey and the kids on a road trip to reclaim what he believes to be his rightful property. Along the way, he steals a couple of cars and an old man's life savings. The desperation of Collins's characters is so palpable that these scenes are funny rather than disturbing, although his narrator is never quite likeable. When a supposed friend of Frank's says that he wouldn't have wanted to serve beside him in Vietnam, we know how he feels.

The plot is deceptively complex, including comatose characters, secret identities, murder, bankruptcy and fear of madness. While this drives the action, Collins concentrates on individual dramas, and the most important questions seem to be whether Frank can hold down a job, or if his relations will lose their farm. Characters drink and screw, tell bad jokes and stay at Holiday Inns. They call glasses of hard liquor poured straight "cocktails", and find romance in the most unlikely situations.

There is something unusually comforting about the world Collins creates, and the resilience of his unfortunate characters. His is a tarnished American dream, but a dream none the less.

Matt Thorne is the co-editor of All Hail the New Puritans (Fourth Estate, £6.99)

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