Louis Sachar wrote Holes  a book that sold more than 8m copies and not only won, but deserved to win, a shelf-full of prestigious awards. So his publishers must have been pretty excited when his new manuscript came in. I picture them all crowding round Sachar saying: "What's it about? What's it about?" "It's about bridge." "Bridges? As in Madison County? As in On the River Kwai?" "No, bridge as in the complicated card game favoured by retired professionals." "Oh. Right. Bridge. So when this character says 'I'm the only one to bid the grand, which would be cold if spades weren't five-one'  that's not a misprint?" "No. That's bridge." The prevailing wisdom is that writers should start from where their readers are  engage with the fashions and mores of the time. You have to admire Sachar's chutzpah for doing the opposite.

Alton Richards is an awkward teen who has just lost his girlfriend to his best friend. His mother forces Alton into the company of his wealthy great uncle, an aloof, blind bridge genius called Lester, in the hope that Alton will worm his way into his rich relative's affections and get the family a mention in Lester's will. Alton takes a job as the "card turner"  telling Lester what cards he holds and playing them when he's told to do so. But Alton has competition from another young relative, the beautiful but possibly insane Toni Castaneda. As in Holes, the dark secrets of the past are distorting any chance of happiness in the present.

The family relationships are a game in which the older members deal the younger members out like cards. And like Stanley Yelnats in Holes, Alton has a kind of patient courage that allows him to piece together the truth about his family and free himself from the cycle. The result is a detective story which is also a love story, or a love story that is also a detective story. Sachar finds that what the recently dumped teen and the rich old man have in common is boredom. Alton can't wait for life to start and Lester can't wait for it to be over.

More or less all the key moments of that relationship, though, depend on the turn of a card. You have to follow what's happening on the table. Sachar provides lots of guidance. There are long passages explaining the game. These are marked with a whale icon so that you can skip them if you want to and they're followed by a brief summary so that you can get the gist if you do skip. The whale is a nod to Moby-Dick, which is packed with whaling detail, just as The Cardturner is packed with bridge detail. Like Melville, Sachar really sweats the metaphorical potential of his subject. Bridge bridges the gap between young and old, between our desire for order and the chaos of the universe. But no matter how you work it, bridge is not whaling.

The book feels like one long, deadpan dare, as though Sachar has made a bet with himself that he can make the most boring setting thrilling. The American cover even has the cheek to show a young man who has fallen asleep reading. Sachar has Alton admit that he couldn't finish Moby-Dick because he got bored with all the detail. The implication is that Sachar can do what Melville couldn't do. But can he? The genius of Sachar's prose is that it's so plain and unshowy you don't notice the daredevil artistry of his storytelling until it's too late. You don't know you've been cut in half until you try to walk away.

Reading his books is like being hustled in a card game by someone who seems straight-talking and modest but who turns out to be a virtuoso card sharp. So is The Cardturner one big bluff or is he really holding all the trumps? I don't want to spoil it for you but he does something towards the end of this book that I can't imagine anyone else even trying to get away with. As Uncle Lester might say, nicely played, Louis.

Frank Cottrell Boyce's Cosmic is published by Macmillan.