By S.L. Grey

Pan Macmillan, out now

Recovering after an armed break-in at their South African home, Mark and his much younger wife Steph head to Paris for what he hopes will be a much needed rest in Paris. But that’s the last thing the couple get…

The latest collaboration from S.L. Grey (aka Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg) starts from a real life horror that’s all too common for those living in South Africa and slowly but surely builds into a very disturbing portrait of mental and physical disintegration – both for Mark and Steph as a couple and as a family with their young daughter, and also internally for Mark. You could also argue that Steph also becomes unravelled to a degree – what might have been “red lines” for her prior to the events of the novel no longer have quite such force when her family is threatened… Certainly you may think that one viewpoint is rational while the other isn’t, but I suspect strongly that this is a book you’ll experience completely differently if you reread it.

There’s a real sense of mounting dread as the pieces start to fit together – or rather, as they don’t, and the only explanations seem to be increasingly outré. Maybe there is a mundane rational reason for everything failing to work in Paris as it should, and Mark’s pent-up grief is responsible for his behaviour or maybe something outwith Mark and Steph’s rational world is involved. As the couple return to South Africa, things get more bizarre, leading to a final pair of chapters (one told from each perspective) that will leave you chilled.

Verdict: Real world and otherworldly horror mix in a haunting story. 8/10

Paul Simpson