Twitchers

When Richard's campaign for dog food is trolled with hostile memes, he wants to celebrate. For three months, the London adman has been pushing increasingly risky themes in an effort to get sacked without losing his career-minded girlfriend. He's at the mercy of his 'piranhas', OCD symptoms born of an overbearing father. He swallows too much, blinks too much, is obsessed with his heart rate, and sometimes panics during sex.

Dumped anyway, Richard retreats home to Adelaide, where a shrewd agency director wants his ideas to exploit social media outrage. A noisy bird wakes him every morning; smoke fills the sky from a series of violent pyromaniac acts. His friends blame the Blackwood Clown, a hermit artist who's been screaming at bushwalkers. Richard once burnt the clown's paintings in a bungled prank that landed him an arson conviction and, apparently, the clown wants revenge.

Constable Sniles, an angry exile, seeks professional redemption by blaming Richard. He has an alibi in a former lover, Ashleigh, but the more time they spend together, the deadlier the fires become, igniting an inferno so fierce it threatens to consume the entire district and incinerate whatever's left of Richard's mind.

Twitchers by Malcolm Sutton is an intense exploration of personal demons and societal chaos, weaving a narrative that's as fiery as the destruction that haunts its protagonist.