City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg (Jonathan Cape)

City on Fire is set in the mid 1970s in a New York suffering from an economic downtown and about to explode into riots and civil disobedience.

Author Garth Risk Hallberg introduces us to a series of memorable characters. They include William Hamilton-Sweeney, heir to a business empire, who leaves home at 16 and finds himself an artist and lead singer of one of the country's first punk bands.

There is Sam, a teenage girl also unsure of her place in the world, who writes a fanzine but ends up getting shot in a snowy Central Park on New Year's Eve.

The shooting is a plot that drives a lot of the action but Hallberg is far more interested in his characters, all of them flawed and, to varying degrees, adrift from mainstream society.

This is a modern novel with some dazzling narrative tricks and devices. For example, Hallberg is happy to move backwards and forwards, delving into his protagonists' past and even, occasionally, suddenly taking the reader forward years beyond the novel's main action.

He regularly shifts perspectives so that the main characters are revealed gradually and we not only inhabit their minds but also learn how other people perceive them. This means that sometimes you'll start a new chapter and not know for sure who the narrative is following for several paragraphs.

The author also does not shy from introducing new characters quite close to the end of the tale. These often end up playing a vital role in the plot but who you only glimpse for a while.

What is engaging is that there is a kind of liberal democratic flavour here - it's almost as if Hallberg is saying that no-one is more important than anyone else.

There are numerous stand-out scenes, such as young Charlie Weisberger's subway journey into New York, which happens early in the book and sensitive Mercer being grilled by tough new York cops after he discovers Sam's body.

The tour de force happens towards the end of the book when there is a power cut and riots break out. All the characters are at loose in the city, all battling not only the black out but also their own tempests.

City on Fire is not always an easy book. You have to keep concentrating throughout. But the effort is definitely worth it.

Andrew Thomas