Pacific, by Tom Drury - book review: A tale of love, infidelity, and beach volleyball

Fans of Drury's masterpiece debut, The End of Vandalism, will welcome the return of Dan Norman, Grouse County's former sheriff-turned-private investigator

This is the third novel in Tom Drury's extraordinary series set in Iowa's “Grouse County”. Think Lake Wobegon only with less water and whimsy. As the title hints, Drury has expand his formula. In addition to episodes in which characters chat about death, infidelity and love in the Midwest, we have episodes in which characters chat about love, infidelity and beach volleyball in Los Angeles.

Fans of Drury's masterpiece debut, The End of Vandalism, will welcome the return of Dan Norman, Grouse County's former sheriff-turned-private investigator whose caseload includes concerned parents, fraudulent bowlers and Sandra Zulma, a young woman under the impression that she is a Celtic goddess. Dan's wife, Louise, now runs a thrift store. Once again, she bears much of the novel's emotional weight, assimilating griefs both past and present.

Drury's chief ne'er-do-well, Charles “Tiny” Darling, is still ne'er-do-welling, here as the Laughing Bandit who steals not to give to the poor, but because he can. “Tiny” is perhaps the least changed of Drury's repertory company, though not for the want of trying. His step-daughter Lyris has moved out and in with her boyfriend, Albert Robshaw. More unsettling is the decision of Tiny's son Micah to join his mother, Joan Gower, in Hollywood. Since walking out on the Darlings, Joan has become an actress on a show gloriously entitled Forensic Mystic.

The shift of geographical centre isn't as unsettling as might be imagined. Drury's Los Angeles fits nicely into his conversational milieu. Its similarity to Grouse County might be a commentary on big city provincialism, or the levelling impact of 21st culture and technology. I like to think it simply extends Drury's universal aesthetic. His offbeat narratives – stories that promise drama that vanishes from sight, scenes that feel innocuous only to shudder with emotion – disorient, but rarely for long. All human life, no matter how weird, is still human life. My favourite moment involved the undertaker Don Gary ignoring Lyris's pleas to ignore her approaching grandmother. '“I wouldn't think of it,” said Don Gary, always eager to meet someone who might die.' Don learns his lesson when Collette, believing Lyris is being kidnapped, attacks Gary's car with a crowbar.

If comedy offers light relief from Druryan darkness, Pacific proposes other, less earthy consolations. Loneliness and its possible antidotes are Drury's great subjects – how love, family, community and even chance encounters provides escape from isolation.

Old Street £12. Order for £10.80 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030