Jess Kidd’s novel opens with the brutal death of a young girl in the 1950s before skipping forwards in time to the 70s, when a charismatic stranger, Mahony, arrives in the small village of Mulderrig on the west coast of Ireland. He brings with him a photograph of himself as a baby and is trying to find out what happened to the mother who, as he understands it, left him on the steps of a Dublin orphanage.

Mulderrig is replete with colourful and eccentric inhabitants. Mahony teams up with Mrs Cauley, an ancient lady of the stage with a wayward wig who has plans to put on a local production of Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.

The novel’s greatest strength is the way Kidd’s writing slides between humour and horror. Like the child in The Sixth Sense, Mahony can see the dead. They are always with him and his world is full of ghost-girls and transparent animals, bodies dangling from the branches of trees with their necks stretched out of shape.

Mahony’s story is told in tandem with Orla’s, the teenage girl destined to meet a messy end in the forest. There’s a good deal of wit and some sparkling dialogue as Kidd sketches in the village’s inhabitants. She hops nimbly between timelines and has imagination to spare. The forest feels alive at times. There is magic in the air. But the story becomes rather baggy and tangled in its middle section. There’s simply too much going on and focus is lost.

As a noirish thriller with a supernatural edge, Himself is atmospheric and intriguing. As a portrait of village hypocrisy and the dark things that lurk beneath the surface, it’s also compelling.

Kidd hasn’t quite found a method of knitting all these different things together in a satisfying way, but the novel fizzes with potential.

• Himself by Jess Kidd is published by Canongate (£8.99). To order a copy for £7.64 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99