I think this is what the literary types call 'Scottish noir', but I could be wrong. This is a 'boxed set' of episodes that make a novel. It's gruesome apocalypse fiction, set mostly in contemporary Scotland and the north east of the USA. There's a tinge of extremely black humour reminiscent of Chris Brookmyre and Iain Banks - hence my reference to 'Scottish noir', but Hutchison is very much his own man. I'm in danger of spoiling it a bit when I say he really keeps you guessing, and wrong-foots the reader time and again. Just when you think it can't get any worse for the protagonists, it does.