Zane Lovitt's second foray into crime fiction has many of the hallmarks of a Raymond Chandler noir; as soon as the reader thinks she is beginning to get a handle on what is going on, another red herring gets lobbed into the plot. While this will impress some, others who tend to agree with Alfred Hitchcock's less-than-glowing assessment of Chandler's work (in a 1962 interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock described Chandler's unused screenplay for Strangers on a Train [1951] as 'no good') may find it difficult to endure the marathon seventy-two chapters on offer here.

That would be a shame: Lovitt's narrative bustles along with an intensity that verges upon the gripping at times. Black Teeth features a host of technical devices and stylistic turns which, if nothing else, highlight the author's precocity. If, as in so many crime novels, the imagery is laid on pretty thick, Lovitt's images are at least gratifying more often than not.

A final caveat: though Black Teeth may hark back to early noir, it is also situated very much in the present, courtesy of certain quirks more reminiscent of a teenage gossip session than a major novel. The most annoying of these, for this curmudgeonly reader at least, is the narrator's regular use of the term 'like' (as in this review is, like, almost at an end).

Minor irritations aside, Lovitt has confirmed his great promise here. A writer definitely worth following.