Its two main characters are Cameron Colley, a journalist on a Scottish newspaper called The Caledonian (which resembles The Scotsman), and a serial murderer whose identity is a mystery.

He also smokes cigarettes and cannabis, drinks copious amounts of alcohol, plays computer games, and has adventurous sex with a married woman, Yvonne.

Furthermore, he reflects on his awful experience of witnessing the aftermath of the massacre at the 'Highway of Death' in the Gulf War, and covers the deployment of HMS Vanguard, Britain's first Trident nuclear missile submarine.

In it, he suggested that certain named capitalist and right-wing public figures would be better hate-figures than the conventional ones of foreign leaders or domestic criminals.

Banks claimed in an interview that Complicity is "[a] bit like The Wasp Factory except without the happy ending and redeeming air of cheerfulness".