When Richard’s campaign for dog food is trolled with hostile memes, he wants to celebrate. For three months, the London adman’s been pushing increasingly risky themes in an effort to get sacked without losing his girlfriend.

He’s at the mercy of his ‘piranhas’, OCD symptoms born of an overbearing father. He swallows too much, blinks too much, and sometimes panics during sex. Dumped anyway, Richard retreats home to the Adelaide where a shrewd agency director wants his ideas to exploit social media outrage.

Smoke fills the sky from a series of violent pyromaniac acts. His friends blame the Blackwood Clown, a hermit artist who’s been screaming at bushwalkers. Richard once burnt the clown’s paintings in a bungled prank that landed him an arson conviction and, apparently, the clown wants revenge.

Constable Sniles, an angry exile, seeks professional redemption by blaming Richard. He has an alibi in a former lover, Ashleigh, but the more time they spend together, the deadlier the fires become.