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THERE is something mildly pretentious and a little offputting about the name of Alex Garland's long-awaited second novel, The Tesseract.

 Set in the murky suburbs of the Philippines' capital, it would have been far better to have kept the title simple and catchy, say 'Thriller in Manila', rather than choosing something abstruse that for many will reek of uninspiring mathematical concepts.

 Just for the record, a tesseract is the shape created when a hypercube unravels - six cubes arranged in the shape of a crucifix with two more placed either side of the centre of the cross.

 Annoyingly, the reader does not discover this until page 205. But then, you wonder, what is its significance anyway?  As Garland points out, a tesseract is difficult to imagine, which you can only presume is the explanation for the way the book's events collide horrifically.

 The novel skilfully weaves together three narratives, blending the tranquil images of the rural Philippines with the harsh realities of urban Manila.

 The first strand opens with Sean in a dingy hotel room awaiting Don Pepe, the mestizo gangster who runs the shipping lanes of the South China Sea and apparently wants to kill him.

 Arguably, it is this segment that contains the novel's most memorable and exquisitely told scene.

 Sean, with gun in hand and straining to overcome an attack of tickling brought on by nerves, peers through the spy-hole of his hotel room to find Don Pepe and his associates waiting outside.

 In a sequence that would not look out of place in a Hitchcock film, Sean opens the door but as he does so, the ensuing vacuum slams another one closed further down the hallway.

 The reader expects the gang to be staring at him, but the sudden interruption has them turning away, placing Sean in a strange sort of no-man's land that gives him a split-second advantage.

 This section also includes some wonderfully played out scenes between Pepe and his sidekicks that reflect the camaraderie and black humour of society's twilight zone.

 These are supposedly hardened criminals, but when one runs over a cat, fatally injuring it, he reveals himself as a softy. All the reader feels is his pain as he mulls over whether to put it out of its misery.

  Pepe, obsessed by his country's colonial past, shows both awe and disdain for Europeans such as Sean and for what they represent.

 And of course, being the baddie, there is the gruesome story - told in whispers by those who work for him - of how he chopped off the hands of one of his workers.

 The second strand involves Rosa, a doctor and mother sitting at home awaiting the return of her husband who has been delayed after fixing a flat tyre.

 She reflects on her upbringing in a rural backwater, her marriage to a good man and the lost opportunity of a life spent with her childhood sweetheart.

 The third centres on a street urchin, Vincente, who begs on Roxas Boulevard while keeping an eye out for the affluent young man who pays him to relate his dreams.

 When the three elements finally gel together the climax is swift, but predictable.

 Garland is adroit at contrasting the differences between the haves and have-nots of Philippine society. Yet because of the book's style, it frequently feels cold and remote so that the reader cares little about the characters.

 For all its slickness and its unusual triptych structure, The Tesseract disappoints after Garland's strong debut with The Beach.

The Tesseract by Alex Garland Viking, $170 



Paths crossed in murky Manila