J. Wallis Martin: Dancing with the Uninvited Guest

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Ooh, spooky. A crumbling manor house in claustrophobic Northumbria, where people go missing and a young man is apparently possessed by a strange thing which leaves bite marks.

When an 18-year-old girl disappears from Lyndle Hall, and when the master of the manor vanishes too, enter the charismatic but creepy clairvoyant Cranmer, who says he can tell the police where the girl's body lies.

But not so fast psychic boy, because hot on his heels is the parapsychologist Audrah Sidow who, after a career spent trying to prove that there is nothing which cannot be explained rationally, has one last task before giving up dabbling in disproving the afterlife: to expose Cranmer as a charlatan who is chasing celebrity through exploiting other people's grief.

Thriller writers chase celebrity or at least, those nice fat royalty cheques through exploiting other people's fear. Wallis Martin is very good at the game.

New English Library

$22.95