Patrick McCabe's The Dead School (Picador, £6.99 in UK) is a gothic novel, a potent tragic-comic synthesis which at one moment can be very funny but at the next can be so heart-rendingly sad. It is a macabre tale of two contrasting characters, headmaster Raphael Bell and teacher Malachy Dudgeon. Their lives fatalistically cross when Malachy gains a post in a school which Raphael has groomed to be the finest in Dublin. The relationship that emerges proves fatal to both their fortunes and their sanity. Their fall from grace is depicted brilliantly as their ruined lives have a haemorrhaging effect on their minds and both retire from society. Their sordid lives, however, cross once more, with shocking consequences.