Set in San Francisco, this book is too clever by more than a half. The central character is 14-year-old Gwen Needle, who is going through the kind of rebellion that is required of 14-year-old American girls if they are to reach womanhood and grow up to become eligible to run for president. Her parents are copybook – read cliche – blunderers in the matter of understanding teenage daughters; their marriage is taken from the standard modern narrative of unhappiness and infidelity. Though the writing is clever and darkly funny, the plotting is improbable and the changing point of view is confusing. Be warned, however, that though the author is best known for his children's books, this is a very adult story.

Brilliant
By Roddy Doyle
Macmillan. 232 pp. $19.99.

Two children eavesdrop on adults discussing the effects of the GFC. "The black dog of depression is after stealing Dublin's funny bone," is how their granny puts it. The two children take this statement literally and creep out of the house after everyone else is asleep to find this black dog and take back the funny bone from him. Their adventures and those of the many other children who join them in their quest take up the major part of this Roddy Doyle children's story. The only weapon the children have against the black dog is the word "brilliant", a particularly Dublin catch-all word that can mean happiness or disapproval or wonder or many other things depending on context and emphasis. Cheeky and irreverent, this is the kind of book that would make wonderful night reading to a favoured child or grandchild.

A Mad and Wonderful Thing
By Mark Mulholland
Scribe. 288 pp. $29.99.

This novel is set in the early 1990s at the height of the Ulster Troubles. The central character and first person narrator is a young man who is a deep thinker on the place of humans in the big scheme of things. More significantly he is also a cold killer. His favoured weapon is a black Barrett semi-automatic with a scope, which he uses as a long distance sniping weapon targeting British soldiers on the other side of the border from his home in the South. The objective is 10 hits, one for each of the dead hunger strikers of 1981. He is well on the way to this total when he falls in love with Cora Flannery, an ethereal creature, full of the stories of Cuchulainn, Oisin and Tir na nOg. The writing is assured and clear and the ending is creatively satisfying.