The swap

A hilarious first novel: on one level a superbly plotted thriller, on another, a black comedy that will amuse anyone who has attended, or considered attending, a school reunion"Since I last saw them I've not got married, or had any children, or got a promotion, or inherited a fortune; I've been doing exactly the same things I was doing last time I went.""Well tell them you've expanded.""They'll see that for themselves."Another school reunion looms for Harvey Briscow, and once again he agonises over whether to attend; as the owner of a comic shop, a devout drinker, smoker and full-time misanthropist, he's spent much of his time wondering what might have been had he chosen another path. Nothing in Harvey's life has changed since the last reunion, five years ago, or indeed the one before, and short of fabricating a fantastic change of fortune there's little to be had by going. Not until Josh, his sole employee and only true friend, suggests he may have opportunity to reclaim a very rare comic Harvey once swapped, does he galvanise himself into action.On arrival at the crowded event he meets the much-maligned Charles 'Bleeder' Odd, who has now matured into a successful businessman and appears nauseatingly content with his lot. But as Harvey makes inroads to retrieve his lost comic, he begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. The worthless item he exchanged it for must have some significance...The Swap cracks along at a tremendous pace. On one level Antony Moore's debut is a superbly plotted thriller, on another, a hilarious black comedy that will amuse anyone who has attended, or considered attending, a school reunion.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.