Boxer, Beetle: Ned Beauman

Kevin Broom is a Nazi memorabilia collector and an awkward, fish-scented sufferer of trimethylaminuria. Seth ‘Sinner’ Roach is a pre-World War II Jewish boxer, short, nine-toed, alcoholic, and the best fighter in England. Philip Erskine is a collector of beetles, a devout follower of eugenics, and mostly deplorable – and he wants to conduct tests on Sinner.

As Kevin deals with an alarming beetle-related kidnapping in the present, he pieces together how Sinner and Philip Erskine, 70 years before, have brought him to the point where a graceless shut-in like himself has to deal with a gun-wielding member of a long-dead Nazi society. From Sinner, intimidating even in paper form, and poor inept Erskine, to foul-mouthed pre-teen Millicent Bruiseland and sarcastic social darling Evelyn Erskine, everyone is wonderfully drawn and fantastically entertaining. Even London itself, and the buildings contained within, are as alive as the people; the story is so perfectly formed I had to keep reminding myself it was not history but just clever and well-researched fiction.

Boxer, Beetle is an addictive tale of bugs, breeding and the violence in everyone.