Middle-class people of the 21st century will become a dysfunctional lot indeed if they ever get to resemble the creatures described in J.G. Ballard's Millennium People (HarperCollins, £16.99).

A seemingly docile group of such people, living in a comfortable London enclave called Chelsea Marina, and posessing such trappings as Volvos and private health insurance policies, are suddenly whipped out of their complacency by a mad doctor.

It seems an implausible tale, a continuation of a theme Ballard has examined in earlier books, about how bored many mainstream Brits are becoming and how they may one day want to kick against the pricks, break out of the yoke of endless mortgage payments, exam passing, keeping up with the Joneses etc.

The trouble is that, like many books ultimately about boredom, it is boring. Of course many feel this way but that does not mean that they are about to support violence, as happens in this book.

The story is about a psychologist who thinks he is unaffected by a random bomb in Heathrow -- until he discovers that it killed his ex-wife. He investigates further and is drawn ever deeper into a weird group of middle-class people inciting other professionals to violence.

The book is based on feelings of pointlessness and powerlessness that many of us might recognise at this particular point of Britain's evolution. But the essential argument that that feeling could lead to mainstream murder and mayhem is specious.

Even the descriptions of group members, bent on undermining the values of people living in leafy suburbs by visiting them armed with questionaires, are hackneyed and unfunny. There is even the old chestnut about people buying spray-on mud for their Range Rovers.