It was probably only a matter of time before Benjamin Myers – formerly a journalist for NME, Melody Maker, Kerrang! and others – wrote a novel about music and its uniquely potent capacity to unlock memory, unite and heal.

Like 2020’s The Offing and 2022’s The Perfect Golden Circle, Rare Singles is essentially a two-hander. A widowed and washed-up singer from Chicago, Earlon ‘Bucky’ Bronco, comes into contact with northern soul fanatic Dinah, who’s invited him to the UK for his first-ever live performance. Can he break out (or be broken out) of his grief, self-doubt and opioid addiction and find salvation in Scarborough?

The bond between the two takes time to become believable, and some of the dialogue perhaps lacks Myers’ vintage sparkle, but his evocation of place is as powerful as ever, though this time not of the natural world but of a scuffed, scuzzy seaside town. If, after the thrillingly experimental and ambitious Cuddy, Rare Singles falls into feelgood book-group territory, it’s less a marker of a permanent change of direction than a measure of a versatile author continuing to follow his muse rather than fashion or expectation.