Chris Popham is an average man, living in an average mortgaged home, working at an average job (if you reckon that selling portable parking spaces, Instaglamour Cream and dried water is average.)

In Chris' Britain, magic is a long-established and widely applied force. People employ it every day alongside more conventional technologies. Unfortunately, magic has its own special problems. And most people don't understand it any better than they understand exactly how their color televisions work.

But intrepid salesman Chris plods on. He hates his boss, gets headaches dealing with customers and trembles at the displeasure of his live-in girlfriend. The only bright spots in his life are pub nights with an old classmate (for whom he still carries a torch) and conversations with his dashboard navigation system (a Fey princess imprisoned in a box).

It's really not much of a life. But it gets worse when demons start popping up, killing his customers, invading his car and torturing him for information he doesn't have. Fortunately, his old flame, a commander in the government demon-control agency, promises to help. Then the entity he calls SatNav escapes, his trainee turns out to be a disguised demon, a customer (who may be a Norse deity hiding from lawyers) shoves him down an enchanted toilet and Chris realizes he has become a pawn in a supernatural conflict, which may leave him seriously dead. Also, there's a strange hummingbird involved.

Author Tom Holt is an Oxford-educated former solicitor with more than 40 books to his credit. He is clever enough to turn what might be seen as the confused struggles of a desperate and quietly depressed man into a humorous journey filled with plot twists more convoluted than a 10-dimensional Klein bottle.

"May Contain Traces of Magic" will not suit all tastes, but those who enjoy dry British wit and improbable tales might find its unique flavor satisfying.