Welcome to the dark side of P. G. Wodehouse; those of you who are accustomed to his clever, wickedly funny writing will find much of it in Helen Smith's near future dystopian thriller "The Miracle Inspector". While I will confess that I have never acquired a taste for Wodehouse's comedic fiction, Smith's novel reads like the unexpected love child of Wodehouse mixed with Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick in this subtle, surprisingly compelling, near future dystopian SF novel that is among the better examples of recent dystopian fiction I have encountered, and one that is far more compelling than anything I have read written by writers on my side of the Atlantic Ocean. Smith paints a vividly disturbing, but still engrossing, depiction of a near future Great Britain undergoing a harsh, quite precipitous, decline in which the country has been separated between a barely civilized rural landscape noted for its vigilante justice despite the presence of United Nations peacekeepers, and a totalitarian London in which women are denied the right to work outside their homes. Thinking they might find a happier, more fulfilling life for themselves in rural Cornwall, a young couple, Lucas, "the Miracle Inspector" working for a government ministry, and Angela, his almost simple-minded, wife, begin plotting their escape. What ensues is an almost relentless litany of tragic errors as their best laid plans are torn asunder by unexpected circumstances. Smith excels in depicting a near future Great Britain not so dissimilar than the present, creating a near future world in which the present is merely prologue to a surprisingly credible future, via a most simple, yet still descriptive, prose. Readers intent on reading a far more dramatic vision of a dystopian future will miss the subtle, often sly, social commentary that lurks within the pages of Smith's novel; hers is a vision that is quite compelling in its own right, and one as noteworthy as Gary Shteyngart's in his P. G. Wodehouse Award-winning novel "Super Sad True Love Story".