Matthew, between jobs and a little down on his luck, decides to spend part of the summer with his wealthy cousin, Charlie, and Charlie’s beautiful wife, Chloe, at their idyllic country house in upstate New York.  It’s an uneasy ménage.  Charlie – spoiled, entitled, and self-obsessed  – treats his cousin little better than the hired help, while Matthew suffers an unspoken and unrequited passion for the vague, listless Chloe.  It has all the makings of a suffocating love triangle until Matthew discovers that there’s much more to Chloe than he ever expected …

James Lasdun is a versatile writer of novels, poetry and non-fiction.  Although he must have crossed my radar previously  (I found on my bookshelves an unread proof copy of one of his earlier novels, Seven Lies), the impetus to read The Fall Guy came from a very positive review in the Financial Times.  It has an unusually intense atmosphere: hot and claustrophobic, its enervated characters weighed down by a torpor that’s as much moral as it is physical.  There’s also some savage satire here as Lasdun skewers the self-absorbed, self-important “New York summer set” in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

The Fall Guy is a difficult novel to categorize.  Part social satire and part literary thriller, it’s not completely satisfactory as either.  The sterile lives of the rich and privileged have given material to writers for generations.  Something a little special is needed to make that material feel unfamiliar and strange.  Lasdun didn’t provide that twist, though he did serve up an atmospheric and engaging story.