Patrick McGrath has, practically single handedly (one thinks of the unjustly neglected John Hawkes), created a new genre of fiction, which might be dubbed Modern Gothic. With characteristic graveyard irony he describes this book as "a comedy of errors and a rattling good yarn"; yes, well ... McGrath did grow up in Broadmoor Special Hospital, where his father was medical superintendent. The Grotesque is set in 1949 in England, and is narrated by Sir Hugo Coal, an amateur palaeontologist with a bad leg, who conceives a terrible suspicion that his butler, Fledge, is bent on usurping him and his property, and also his wife. The tone is, as always, wonderfully sustained - imagine Agatha Christie and Poe in a frightful liaison - and there are many gruesome laughs.