There is good and bad in Frankie Gaffney's energetic debut novel Dublin Seven. The bad is difficult to ignore as the author's hand is evident throughout, explaining his characters' actions in a stilted prose that jars with the northside setting and voice. Riddled with cliches – dull curiosities, images seared in memory, floodgates opening – it also veers, quite randomly, into the perspectives of side characters. But the good is such that it almost makes up for these flaws. In 18-year-old Shane Laochra, a working-class novice drug dealer, Gaffney has created a smart and irreverent voice. Dialogue, from the banter between the "youngfellas" to the intimacies of first love, is well done. When Shane is let speak for himself, his engaging story brings the reader into a world where the odds seem stacked against young men as they start their adult lives.