BELLEVUE SQUARE

(No Exit Press £8.99)

IF PAUL AUSTER were to turn his hand to grip-lit, the result might look something like this slow- burning mind-boggler from Canadian writer Michael Redhill.

When Jean, who works in a bookshop in Toronto, is told by a new acquaintance she has a doppelganger called Ingrid, Jean is determined to track her down — but then the acquaintance is murdered.

Another customer who claims to have seen Ingrid is then found hanged in his apartment. Soon, Jean becomes obsessed with her phantom self, staking out Bellevue Square, a former hangout for misfits, drug addicts and the mentally ill, where Ingrid has been seen many times.

She grows detached from her husband and two sons, who are convinced Jean is having a mental breakdown.

By radically scrambling the construct of selfhood and, with it, the stability of narrative, the novel ends up resembling an M. C. Escher painting, with plot strands that double-back on themselves. There’s plenty of fun to be had in this, the first in a projected trilogy, but you might find the frustrations outweigh the pleasures.