Beryl Bainbridge writes horror-comics. She is ruthlessly funny about drab, even squalid, lives which are interrupted and changed for ever by some unexpected event—a violent death, an unsuitable love affair, or, as in Injury Time, a kidnapping. Her dramas are played on an untidy, cluttered stage where dishes are piled high in the sink, where ashtrays or, more likely, saucers, are overflowing, and where neither vacuum cleaner nor carpet sweeper can be relied on to work properly. Her male characters are often bombastic, ineffectual and insensitive. Her women tend to be zany, easily deceived and sluttish: they are capable of making perceptive, imaginative comments about love, marriage, old age and death, but they may well have forgotten to change their underwear for several days and they will almost certainly not have cleaned the oven in the cooker or de-frosted the fridge for months.

Bainbridge is at her...