On first reading the blurb of this book I found myself wondering what on earth Graham Joyce was up to. Joyce, as original a fantasist as the literary world has to offer, seemed to be going down a fairly well-worn route, if the description of the plot was anything to go by. A husband and wife, caught in an avalanche in the Pyrenees, make their way back to their holiday village, only to find it deserted, and all their efforts to leave bring them back to the same place. I mean, it's obvious what's going on here, right? The reader is right there, one step ahead of he characters.

But only one step. They're not dumb. The work it out, too. The question is, what happens next? The question is, why is this happening at all? Of course, the reader will work out the next thing early on, too, as they're supposed to, but this one is something the characters cannot or will not grasp, for a very good reason. And as the lights flicker and the shadows close in and the ghostly men get nearer, you know what must happen, but instead of being a hackneyed cop-out cliche, it's Hitchcock's old lesson about suspense being when you know the bomb under the desk is going to go off, and the ending is almost unbearable.

I was explaining this to my wife.

'Because it's a love story,' I told her, and she laughed.

'How did you manage to accidentally trick yourself into reading a love story?'

'Because it's Graham Joyce.'