NO one does preppie angst quite like Douglas Kennedy. He made his name with a series of white-collar thrillers detailing American executives caught out of their comfort zone. Then in 2001 he broke into the mainstream with The Pursuit of Happiness.

He utilised the skills needed for a pageturning crime caper to produce an ambitious saga of a grand New York family in the McCarthy era. Switching to a female narrative voice brought him a new readership but since that success his output has been of variable quality. However, his new novel finds Kennedy once again adapting his modus operandi to new possibilities and with highly successful results.

The unlucky sap in Kennedy's latest is Harry Ricks, a film lecturer at a liberal arts college in Ohio. Harry washes up in Paris trying to escape the fallout from a scandalous affair with one of his students.

He has a few thousand euro and a vague dream of spending his days in cinemas and nights writing fiction. It's not that simple: a series of bad encounters drives him to take a grotty bedsit in the Turkish quartier and an illegal job as a night watchman.

When Harry is seduced by Margit, an ageing and mysterious Hungarian emigre, things start to look brighter. However, Margit's entrance coincides with even bigger problems for Harry, as those responsible for his downfall begin to turn up dead.

What begins as familiar Kennedy material quickly transmutes into a scenario that is peculiarly Kafkaesque. "I was in a reality that might not be a reality that still might be real, " considers Harry. He's a flaneur in freefall. This riddle is played out in an oppressive, unfamiliar Paris. It's a city of cheap linoleum, losers on the make and cops with faces so red they "look selfbasting". This is no picaresque tale of redemption in St Germain cafes.

Kennedy is great at describing the part finance plays in desperate acts. For instance, we learn that the sum cost of a random act of casual sex amounts to 2 for the condoms (not used) and 38 for the resulting prescription. A grim, claustrophobic atmosphere is layered with sleazy transactions and the emotional flaws of the characters. It's all neatly captured in Kennedy's sharp, shoot-from-the-hip prose:

la vie Parisienne full of "insomniac jags" and "febrile shakes".

There are a lot of cinematic references but this book specifically pays homage to Hitchcock. It develops as a kind of North by Northwest of Montmartre, a knowing tribute that throws in plenty of MacGuffins to keep the suspense bubbling and pulls out a twist to match anything Hitchcock framed.

The only disappointing aspect is the shoddy line-editing job, which missed a shocking amount of typos. But even this shouldn't stop The Woman in the Fifth placing Kennedy back in the bestseller lists.