THIS is another clever, laugh-out-loud satire from the author of the hilarious Fox (Books, 24 March 2016). Mild-mannered editor Ben Fairweather’s genteel religious magazine is taken over by a fanatical movement that believes that animals are closer than humans to God and should receive holy communion. A national religious revival means that this belief becomes mainstream, and Ben is fired and publicly pilloried as a petphobic bigot.

A Russian spy, Grigorski, is sent to London, disguised as an Orthodox priest, to subvert democracy and launder five billion dollars for the party chairman. Kevin, a naïve teenager, moved to Cornwall under a witness-protection programme, discovers a talent for art forgery. Gardner sets up different threads and darts between them with a complex plot that whizzes along, constantly subverting your expectations, and finally links them up in ways you couldn’t possibly predict.

Reduced to playing the piano in his godfather’s nightclub, Ben meets Anita, a journalist bent on exposing the Russian oligarch Ogorodnikov, newly elevated to the House of Lords. Little do they know that he intends to take over London’s financial system, and his plans to demolish London’s Wren churches are the least of his crimes.

The satire is hilarious, and familiar enough to be thoroughly unsettling. The jokes flash and scatter like sparks from a firework, with merry sideswipes at pet-inclusive language and a Prime Minister desperate for popularity. Each page is studded with one-liners like fruit in panettone.

Underneath the fun, there is a feeling of tension as the oligarch weaves his webs behind the scene. And the author teases you with the apparently inexplicable. What links the murders of a retired lady lawyer, an elderly clergyman, and a successful banker? Why is the oligarch’s genius assistant, Anton, so set on writing bad novels with stolen plots?

Part acute social comment, part thriller, and wholly wonderful.

Fiona Hook is a writer and EFL teacher.

All God’s Creatures
Anthony Gardner
Eye Books £14.99
(978-1-78563-440-6)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49