"This is a true story," dying writer Samson Young says by means of introduction, and the reader couldn't get a more potent clue that Young will not be the most reliable of tale-tellers. But he is high on the story he has to tell: "Novelists don't usually have it so good, do they, when something real happens ... and they just write it down?"

Against the vaguely apocalyptic background of millennial London, Young introduces us to femme fatale Nicola Six, who orchestrates her own murder.