The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J Walker

Popular fiction’s current dual fixations continue apace. Characters negotiate the dismal misogyny of elaborately plotted murder/abduction fantasies or struggle post-apocalypse as those pesky zombies add complication to the world's end. Walker plumps for the latter (but dispenses with the flesh-eating) in his tale of a UK destroyed by an asteroid strike. It's a stumbling, uneventful chore that will hopefully hasten the end of a genre crying out for a merciful death.

Meet Ed: a self-pitying corporate drone who drinks heavily and ignores his young family. When disaster strikes, and Edinburgh is flattened, he sets out for the south coast and the prospect of safety. This a long, long novel and, like its protagonist, it doesn’t carry its flab well. Ed’s journey is punctuated with drawn-out, dreary set-pieces and narrative flags. A sharp editor would have lost a third of its 450 pages.

Boring then, and at times unsavoury with it. One of Ed’s eventual cohorts is ‘mid-coitus’ as the sirens start – the ‘straggler from a hen party’ leaves ‘pulling on her jeans, stilettos and pink t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Three-pinter.’' You search in vain for the black comedy that might validate the observation. To add to the argument, the book’s only Asian characters are corner shop owners or takeaway workers. The usual prejudices survive global catastrophes, it seems.