A post-postmodern crime novel set on the clean streets of Dublin’s leafiest suburb, Sloot has at its heart an accidental detective who’d rather write his own Celtic-screwball-noir than solve the crime, and a narrator who loses the plot. Literally. Sound complicated? Not so. Thanks to a revolutionary structure, The Inquisitive Bullet, it’s simplicity itself.

Detours include proof that psychoanalysis is the oldest profession, validation of the dictum `For what is comedy but tragedy with loose trousers’, and a brief aside on the possibility of an Irishman having multiple birth mothers. While the plot bullet speeds, inquisitively, towards its target – the final full stop.