Bob Flint is a middle-aged alcoholic who finds his life in turmoil following a tragic evening of accidents. On the bright side, it looks like an unexpected windfall is going to allow him to pursue his dream of running a bar. However, Bob can't wait for the windfall to land so borrows the cash in advance and this makes life a little more complicated when it looks like the apple may never drop.

Spritz is described as a black comedy and if writing comedy is difficult then writing black comedy, presenting the tragic and the depressing as humorous, must be doubly taxing. In Spritz it's all too real, too black and depressing and too familiar to be truly funny and the characters don't have the strength to counter this realism. Hart says that he 'wanted to apply the ridiculous nature of soap operas, Hollywood blockbusters and character cliches into a very bland and dismal existence' and in essence this is what he's done. He's taken what we love about these productions and stripped away the interest, the excitement and the intrigue. The characters are two-dimensional and predictable, the alcoholic Flint a sketch of this affliction, the young men and women caricatures of their generation, the heavies and the coppers playing tired and obvious roles. Even the locations are lightly penciled in, generic council flats, hospitals and clubs. All this means that the comedy fails to trigger and we're left with a rather uninteresting drama that unfolds slowly and painfully.

The writing is largely easy on the eye and reads well. I found at times that the narration became too chatty and there are passages that drag on beyond their useful life but on the whole it's well-formed and in the final stages the book does indeed become a page-turner as the reader rushes towards the conclusion. Although the publicity on the novel emphasises Hart's attempt to present a 'script' of sorts, this really didn't come across to me the cover design, which presents the novel as though it were a film novelisation, therefore seems a little at odds with the content. It could be said that Spritz lacks the normal three-act structure of a movie in that there is no second act to speak of. The second act or 'confrontation' is typically where the story is complicated and draws the audience into the movie in preparation for the final act or 'resolution'. In Spritz, there is a gaping two-month hole where this second act should be. Major events are simply skipped and what might have proven to be the most interesting period in the lives of the characters is simply missing.

I couldn't help feeling that the novel could have been far better if Hart had ignored the comedic element and had concentrated on the dramatic. If anything Hart has tried to be too clever here; his attempts to parody film and TV come across more as an attempt to shoehorn popular culture into the plot and the unusual layout style, employing very short 'scenes' served largely to break up the flow of the narrative.

Spritz was the first - and by all accounts so far the only - publication from Fragile Publishing and it's no bad start but fragile it is and hopefully the forthcoming sequel will have more weight to it.

Jon