The world of crime and punishment, like that of the intensive care unit, cannot be truly known except by those who have crossed its threshold and become, in whatever capacity, a part of it. M. J. Hyland’s new novel is about the steps that take Patrick Oxtoby to that threshold, and what lies for him beyond it.

Oxtoby is a young mechanic who leaves his home town after his fiancée breaks off their engagement, and comes to a seaside town where he has found a job and a room in a boarding house. From the first pages the laconic first-person narrative is full of tension. The story of a young man getting to know his landlady, trying to find a girlfriend and making a start in his new job is shot through with Oxtoby’s skewed perceptions and suppressed panic. Welkin, one of his fellow boarders, soon becomes an obsession.

In This is How, the act of murder is not a mystery to be unravelled, either practically or psychologically. The narrative cannot engage with the victim, either, because Oxtoby is not able to feel for him, and Hyland is scrupulous about holding to his viewpoint. Instead, the novel offers a moment-by-moment account of the transformation that takes place when a person commits an irrevocable act and enters the criminal justice system. Hyland’s focus is steady, her detail relentless.

The novel becomes deeply moving, not because there is any special pleading for Oxtoby but because it stays with a devastated man in all his weakness. For his survival he must quickly learn to live by the guards’ rules, and, more importantly, by those of the prisoners. He must keep his head down and not attract the wrong kind of attention. The tedium of his trapped hours is seasoned by the fear of being jumped or raped, as he quickly learns which of his fellow prisoners he can handle and which, terrifyingly, he cannot. Oxtoby clings to the illusion of his own difference from the other men for as long as he can. He may have killed Welkin, but he is not a killer. He refuses to believe that this prison life is his; instead, a mistake has been made that has to be unpicked. He is like a man at the crumbling edge of a cliff, still clawing for a hold long after his fall is certain.

That fall, when it comes, is also a release. This is not a book about redemption or easy hopes, but about the most extreme forms of chaos that can arise from being human. It would be a travesty if Oxtoby achieved catharsis at this stage, but he has a glimpse of insight, and a moment when he embraces what he is and calls it by its right name. This is an expertly paced, gripping novel that doesn’t falter and never compromises its emotional truth.

This is How by M. J. Hyland Canongate, £12.99; Buy this book; 320pp

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