Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman Sceptre, HK$104
This week's second debut novel by a talented young British writer is Boxer Beetle. There's no mistaking this for a book by Martin Amis - or anyone else unless you can imagine the bastard child of Franz Kafka, David Mitchell and P.G. Wodehouse. Still, Boxer Beetle manages to be both familiar and enjoyably odd. It starts with a murder. Opening narrator, Kevin Broom (aka 'Fishy' because of his pungent body odour), collects Nazi memorabilia, which is, he admits, strange and morally dubious: 'You feel as if you are doing something wrong, and yet you know it can't be wrong because you're doing no harm to anyone.' Fishy is sent to investigate a private eye who is not only dead, but owns a priceless letter written by Hitler to a scientist called Erskine. Beauman then whisks away the narrative tablecloth leaving us in a boxing ring with the diminutive fighter, Seth 'Sinner' Roach. Gay, Jewish and violent, Sinner is soon in the grips (amorous and scientific) of Dr Erskine who, it transpires, has an interest in eugenics. The prose is clear but inventive: weaving out of his corner, Sinner moves 'like a dozen kind admirers were trying to present him with a garland of poison ivy'. Boxer Beetle is dazzling.