Texan-born, Berlin-dwelling Greg Baxter is something of a purist when it comes to plot; with him, less is always more. In Munich Airport – as with his first novel, The Apartment – the barest bones of a story are elegantly overlaid with the character's thoughts and memories.

An American expat in London is summoned to Germany after his estranged sister Miriam is found dead of starvation, alone in her Berlin flat. Three weeks later, the man and his elderly father wait to board the plane that will take them and Miriam's body home to America. Trapped in Munich airport while heavy fog grounds flights, the man recalls, in fits and starts, the events of the previous weeks.

It's testament to Baxter's skills that so plotless a novel manages to retain such pace and poise. While I can understand that some readers might yearn for more obvious narrative direction, there's something mesmerising about the prose, his character's struggle to understand the apparent meaningless of his sister's death replicated in the cul-de-sacs of his own memory and narrative capabilities.

Munich Airport is published by Penguin (£14.99). Click here to buy it for £11.99 with free UK p&p