Scottish Irvine Welsh, by now quite American, after 17 years since the Trainspotting author one-time provocateur-in-chief of the British literary scene first moved stateside to Chicago, home city of his second wife, and since their divorce he has kept a house in Miami. In what ought to be constitutional impossibility, there are times when Donald Trump, recumbent in Mar-a-Lago, is just 70-miles from the man who once wrote that “Whin yir oan Junk, aw ye worry aboot is scorin”.

A divided Las Vegas family is forced to confront the past and reckon with a dangerous future, although Trump is seldom named directly in its pages- he instead appears as “an orange face” or “that spoiled, moaning baboon”- the book is certainly about life under the 45^th and 47^th Presidencies, with word such as “Covid”, “Fox News” and “Tesla” standing out.

Mandalay Bay, a Las Vegas casino resort, from which, in October 2017m a gunman perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, firing round after round into the crowd attending an adjacent country music festival.

The casino and 2017 shooting also provide the setting for the opening of Can Nothing Save Us? A fictional free-spirited, liberal millionaire by the name George Warburton, is among the festivalgoers that evening- and among the victims. George is shot in the neck and the leg, though he survives.

The novel jumps 10 years later to 2027, but the scar tissue from Mandalay Bay, and from other real-life atrocities, persists.

Now terminally ill George is reckoning with his involvement in the My Lai massacre of 1968 – in which hundreds of South Vietnamese villagers were slaughtered by US troops- while also figuring out what to do with his considerable financial legacy. Should the money go to his semi-estranged daughter Gina, or to his far more present grandson Luke?

George, Gina and Luke as well as George’s wife Molly and Gina’s husband Don are more than just nodes on a family tree. Each takes turn at carrying the narrative weight of the novel, and each is allowed a rich inner life and complicated outer relations.

Luke a college dropout, aspiring writer, electronic dance music aficionado, is struggling to look out for his grandfather while also trying to impress the enigmatic indie-film girl who’s on the edges of his circle. Molly has made suicide pact with George, but suddenly finds herself with new acting work and a handsome next-door neighbour. Everyone and everything connects, plotting a course to—- something very hideous.

They announce that their grandson Luke will inherit their millions. It is sudden news that leaves his daughter Gina hell-bent on revenge. Yet Luke’s good fortune will not last. When a strange newcomer to the neighbourhood insinuates himself into the Warburton’s world, it is the beginning of chain of chilling events that could split the family permanently and put all their lives at risk. The question is, do they have what it takes to survive? In America of 2026 – sorry 2027- there is an awful inevitability about the next mass shooting. Las Vegas Suffered in 2017. Where next?

Can Nothing Save Us? By Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Cape £20, 496 pages.