Brian Moore remains a curiously unplaceable writer, in a variety of senses. The themes of his work have moved from Ireland to Canada and back again, from detailed psychological studies like The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne to elaborate ghost stories like The Great Victorian Collection, from alienated middle-class heroines like Mary Dunne to the politicking clerics of Catholics. In treatment, too, his style embraces near-slapstick, allegory, and documentary-drama. It would be unreasonable to expect similar success, a similar sureness of touch, in all these incarnations; nor is it to be found. What one can rely on is his unpredictability. In The Mangan Inheritance, as usual, one's expectations are confounded; what begins as another study of bourgeois identity crisis shifts into a family drama with implications of a historical detective story….

The Mangan Inheritance might seem to combine themes from several of Moore's earlier novels into a framework...