Psychosis overtakes city noir

Corpsing by Toby Litt (Hamish Hamilton, #9.99) Review by Adam Piette Toby Litt, Generation X adventurer in capitalism, wry and cynical pseudo-beatnik, is a ratpack chronicler of the lifestyle fascism that plagues London. The new kings and queens of lifestyle, Litt tells us, are the sickening Tristrams of satellite TV, producers of modish cack, and the bedhopping supermodel actresses with their tabloid smiles.

His new novel, Corpsing, takes a grim, sordid view of these creatures, weaving a heavy-handed thriller plot round their hate and envy. But Litt protests too much, displaying hysterical sarcasm rather than satirical energy.

The thriller plot begins with a gory shoot-out in a Soho restaurant. Lily, the ravishing heroine of a series of cereal ads, has invited her ex, the seriously unpleasant Conrad, Discovery Channel producer and our narrator. Both are shot up by a bike courier. Lily dies, and Conrad, after months of hospitalisation, becomes the detective. From then on, the plot thickens with gangland hit men, police snoopers, media feeding frenzies, nasty sexual shenanigans.

Litt is genuinely good at the fetishistic chapters detailing the bullets' destructive passage through Lily and Conrad's flesh and bone, staging Conrad's descent into revenge psychosis. It is also a satisfying idea to have a murder victim who victimises the detective through the shock waves of bereavement. One chapter, darkly visioning Conrad's clinch with his dead ex-partner's mother, is remarkable and truly shocking.

Yet, ultimately, this is a disappointing novel which fails to get beyond the artifice of its characters.

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