Rain Dogs and Love Cats Andrew Holmes Sceptre, 408 pages, £12.99

On a hot summer’s day in 1973, a young mother relaxes in her garden and flirts with a man who has come to help her with the paddling pool. After a few drinks she dozes off, with tragic consequences.

In the same town 30 years later, Charlie Watson is disenchanted, directionless and bored. Having given in to his wife’s demands to move out to the suburbs to start a family, he now makes money (not enough) playing cheesy tunes at weddings and birthday parties. His newborn daughter never sleeps, his wife is tired and emotional, and he envies the “high life” of his brother Leo, who works as a professional Tom Waits impersonator.

After Leo is killed in a car crash, it emerges that he was also moonlighting as a detective. Suddenly Charlie’s life becomes a lot more interesting than he wanted, as he’s caught up in a web of secrets, lies and murder stretching back for decades.

While the novel doesn’t quite live up to the riveting and beautifully evoked opening scene, it is nonetheless an engrossing, suspense-fuelled read. Andrew Holmes’s sharp, lively narrative is littered with withering one-liners, and he makes some deliciously wry observations about the ennui of suburbia – and, in this case, the darkness lying beneath it.

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