The Zoo by Jamie Mollart

James Marlowe is a marketing man at the top of his game. To all appearances, he's the very image of success: wowing big clients like clockwork, commanding the respect and reverence of his co-workers and coming home to a big house and a beautiful wife. But of course this shimmering surface covers an emptiness inside. Deep down James is torn up by the ethics of his industry, dulling his doubts with an unbroken tirade of drink and drugs which pushes him ever further from his wife and son, and ever closer to a total psychological breakdown.

It all sounds a little too familiar and that feeling never really wears. It's a little Mad Men and a lot American Psycho, but without the subtlety and depth of the former or the acerbic anger of the latter. There are plenty of works that thrive on the meticulous detailing of drug-fuelled excess but The Zoo's attempts always come off with the forced casualness of someone trying to appear cooler than they are. Nonchalantly name-checking narcotics and sex acts is a favoured trick of creative writing types trying to appear edgy and mature. It does not work. [Ross McIndoe]