Val, a former one-hit-wonder singer and a librarian facing reduced working hours, is offered the chance to appear on a reality show, which she accepts in the hopes of reviving her career.

Over the course of a weekend in 2011, she tells Rachel, now a student there, the story of her recently deceased husband's obsession with a short film he had seen as a child, and how the search for it led to his death.

His approach, which advocates understanding the political and social context of a crime, allows him to not only predict the next target but identify the killer, a man who believes that comedy is making people complacent and is a danger to democracy.

A chance encounter with Val, who now has to attend food banks for sustenance, leads to her reconnecting with Alison, serving a brief term in prison after being framed for benefit fraud.

[6] Reviewing it for The Guardian, Alex Clark called it "a political novel" as well as an "interrogation of the purposes and efficacy of humour in exposing society’s ills, and a spoof on horror B-movies"[7]