A singular Strether comes to Europe

The year is 2099. The world political scene is dominated by the Union - formerly known as the EU - which comprises 42 nations and over a billion people. Russia has been reduced to a lackey state, America is a hick backwater presided over by fundamentalists, the Chinese, watchful and sinister, keep a close eye on everyone from their heavily militarised border posts. In Europe, everyday life is a doddle. Everyone has a job, everyone has a home, the public transport is glorious, frequent and silent, and the environment is immaculately cared for. Thanks to advances in genetic medicine, illness - mental and physical - is a thing of the past.

To the newly-appointed American ambassador, Bill Strether, London looks like the embodiment of what Voltaire once called "the best of all possible worlds". To the embarrassment of his hosts, however, Strether - a wealthy cattle rancher elevated to the higher echelons of diplomacy by a despairing President James Kennedy, whose first nine nominees for the post have been rejected by vetting committees - starts asking the sort of questions which haven't been raised in polite European society for a century. Why do all the security guards look exactly the same? How come every civil servant he meets has blond hair, blue eyes and an insufferably superior manner? Who are the mysterious boat people who have been seeking refugee status in America, and why do they all die after a few weeks?

Like Bill Strether himself, Edwina Currie's fourth novel takes quite a while to get going. The opening scenes, in which a disbelieving Strether is initiated into Euro-cool, provide almost unlimited material for futuristic jokes - kangaroo for lunch, the 2099 New Year's Eve celebrations ("The Ukrainians are running a camel hunt. The Irish are reviving Riverdance, though they've forgotten the steps. The Venetians want a gondola race simultaneously up the Rhine, Thames, Seine and Oder tracked by the Astra 42 satellite"), the appearance of a new religious cult, the Dianists - and, understandably perhaps, Currie milks them to the limit.

Mildly entertaining though it all is, this protracted stage-setting slows the plot down to way below sluggish, and it doesn't gather any real momentum for at least 200 pages. The reader's patience is further tested by the cardboard exteriors of the main characters - it's hard to stifle a groan when you meet Marius the handsome Hungarian prince, and the self-possessed scientist Lisa Pasteur (oh, yes, that Pasteur) - but as Strether, who turns out to be a thoroughly decent old cove, uncovers evidence of dastardly plotting in high places, and the nauseating upper-crust types concede the centre of the stage to an assortment of scruffy dissident types, the whole confection heats to a point where, if it won't burn the fingers, it at least comes close to warming the cockles of the heart.

Currie's debut novel, A Parliamentary Affair, raised a number of eyebrows for its frank, unabashed treatment of sex; this time out she has mercifully avoided what has become, among the best-selling brigade, the obligatory helping of grunting and sweating. She never was a woman to shy away from controversy, however, and it will doubtless enrage some of her former colleagues to find an ex-Conservative minister blithely declaring that "the English . . . were the nation least amenable to fresh ideas. They were snobs, and preferred their upper classes entirely composed of insiders. The old school tie, they called it. And they still spoke as if they could tell the rest of the world what to do."

There is evidence of a formidable intelligence at work here, and the odd flash of endearing humour - at one stage Strether, in search of literary distraction, dithers between Salman Rushdie and "the searing prose of Jackie Collins's later works". It's hard to avoid the conclusion that, if Edwina Currie can just get the mechanics of plot structure right, she may develop into the acceptable face of best-seller-dom in the next century.