Ordinary Human Failings is set in London in 1990, as a housing estate community is rocked by the death of a toddler, with suspicion quickly falling on Lucy, the 10-year old daughter of an Irish family, the Greens. A tabloid journalist, Tom, is dispatched to investigate, with a strong focus on digging up dirt on the Green family, whose outsider, reclusive status means they are the inevitable target of attention for the crime. It’s pitched as a thriller, with a mystery to be solved, and Tom is convinced he’s going to be the one to solve it. He moves the family into a small hotel, plies them with drink and looks for the inevitable trauma that has led them here, and a motive for the crime.

May We Be Forgiven is told from the perspective of Harry Silver, a professor with a specialism in (and obsession with) Richard Nixon. In the novel’s horrific first chapter, his brother George causes a car accident in which two people die, orphaning their child, and is committed to a mental institution.  While George is committed, Harold commences an affair with his wife Jane. George walks out of hospital and finds the pair in bed together, and murders his wife with a bedside lamp.