Received wisdom supposes that the sweeping social realist novel packed its steamer trunk and sailed for America long ago, leaving our island story to be recounted within less expansive parameters. While the Roths, DeLillos and Franzens chomp on supersized slabs of the human condition, their British counterparts make do with the literary equivalent of a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Amid such inexact, if not exactly incorrect, generalisations, Richard T. Kelly's self-consciously Dostoevskyan debut arrives in a flurry of hype that suggests broad ambitions. It's certainly big: 540 pages long. It is centred on the autumn and winter of 1996, but its lengthy flashbacks span the 20 eventful years leading up to the 1997 general election triumph of new Labour.

In September 1996 the Rev John Gore, a serious if not miserable 31-year-old vicar from Pity Me, Co Durham, returns to the North East from a rural Dorset parish to “plant” a church in Hoxheath, a delapidated fictional suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne. Despite some success in dragging parishioners to the school hall from which his church will, it is hoped, flourish, his tentative engagement with the frequently hostile locals makes clear how uphill his struggle will be.

One pillar of the community (literally, given his steroid-enhanced bulk) only too eager to help is Stevie Coulson, who has grown from junior bouncer into a widely feared underworld operator.

While his generosity towards Gore and his ministry is sincere, the priest eventually realises that emulating Jesus's habit of associating with society's lowest orders costs you much goodwill in late-20th century Newcastle.

But if Gore comes a touch late to the benefits of compromise, and Stevie's blunt tactics only rarely require it, then Kelly's other main characters, the single mother Lindy Clark, with whom Gore becomes romantically involved, and the Troskyite socialist-turned-new Labour MP, Martin Pallister, are only too aware of its necessity. Lindy turns a blind eye to the occasional holdall that Stevie leaves at her house for safekeeping while Pallister, whose rise through the ranks is masterminded by Gore's sister Susannah, has seen fellow travellers who spurned change move toward extinction.

These interlocking histories are by far the most successful and rewarding part of Crusaders, which is never less than entertaining. Parallels are drawn between Church and state, dogma and pragmatism, and Kelly touches on other social shifts such as the defeat of Militant Tendency and the inexorable advance of consumerism to the Acid House explosion and football's shift from tribal birthright to entertainment option.

But while this brisk sweep through two decades and varied social stations is invigorating, by the end the crime element of the story - its least interesting and, in terms of ambition, least significant part - has become dominant. Kelly builds tension competently but, next to the riches that could have been mined from Crusaders' seams, punch-ups and police raids have the taste of small beer.

Crusaders, by Richard T. Kelly
Faber, £14.99

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