All God's Creatures by Anthony Gardner

Mild-mannered editor Ben Fairweather is horrified when his genteel religious magazine is taken over by a fanatical movement that believes animals are closer to God than humans and should receive Holy Communion.

Amid a national religious revival, this belief becomes mainstream and he is cancelled as a petphobic bigot. Reinventing himself as a nightclub pianist, Ben meets journalist Anita Scott, who is bent on exposing a newly ennobled Russian oligarch as a cultural vandal.

But Lord Ogorodnikov’s agenda is far more sinister than they realise, and together they are drawn into a world of spies, art forgery and murder, with their own lives on the line. Anthony Gardner ingeniously blends intrigue with sharp satire in a story that is both thrilling and darkly funny.