STEWART HOME’S first novel in six years sets off on a familiar road as its protagonists — Martin Cooper, a fifty-something ex-anti-fascist skinhead and his girlfriend Maria Remedios, a drugged-up Spanish head-case in her forties — flit around trendy parts of inner north London exploring their interests in punk, the occult, horror and deviant sex.

But compared with any normal outing on the filthy, belching Home charabanc, this is a restrained ride — one that’s unlikely to induce too much queasiness and which offers rewards at its destination.

While the sex, as usual, is determinedly unsexy, much of the deviancy is confined in quite coy fashion to the unfulfilled fantasies of the two main characters, who often settle for a kiss and a cuddle rather than any exchange of bodily fluids.