Michael and Elizabeth Gascoigne Elizabeth are both in their thirties and have been married for ten years, a marriage largely devoid of passion, the story is told in both their first persons. "It was what my mother used to call a ‘workable’ marriage.”

Michael is an orphan, and owner by inheritance of the Scottish Highlands estate Ben Carroun. He doesn’t need to work and spends much of his time down in London at his gentlemen’s club Groucher in Mayfair. The club is the beginning and end of his social life, rounds of golf, card games and petty internal squabbling's. Michael's personality reflects his existence. Dull and predictable.

Elizabeth works as a property for a woman’s magazine, a job she does to spend some time away from Michael rather than a need for extra income.

However, after a few days away staying in one of Michael's fellow club member's country house in Ireland, Michael’s personality starts to change. Elizabeth discovers an unopened packet of strange medication, Serendipozan, in the bathroom cabinet. Elizabeth starts asking questions and discovers that in her husband’s past he was known, as a child, as “Mental Mickey”. After the death of his parents Michael was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent a year in a secure unit before, thanks to some “chemical engineering” was considered safe to release him.

Elizabeth's initial worries are tempered by her relief at finding that the lifeless man she thought she had married has been transformed into the passionate Mikey. He is becoming increasingly unpredictable, elusive, assertive, not to mention loving and amorous. But it soon becomes obvious to the reader that the only possible outcome to this story is a violent one.

The book is written from a first person point of view with roughly alternating chapters by Michael and Elizabeth. I found this very effective and the story really drew me in. Torday is such an intelligent writer and I found his depiction of a severe mental health problem absolutely riveting.

However, I found the end of the novel rather disappointing as it seemed to lapse into a negative stereotype of the condition. Michael’s earlier account, his struggles to find a sense of self , his coming back to life as the anti-psychotics leave his system is wonderfully depicted. However, Elizabeth’s description of looking into his eyes and “trying to understand how much of what was behind them was still human” was really disappointing in its negativity. The fact that the novel finishes with Elizabeth only underlined this for me. My own son has been living with the condition with over a decade relatively normally so perhaps tempered my opinion. ( )

And some more star. It was fresh and interesting. Partly interesting for a book to be written in 2006 and set mainly among the members of a gentleman's club and their wives. The narrative swaps between one gentleman and his wife which works well to avoid the supreme difficulty of having a single point of view. Most of the male characters in the book seem to have independent incomes and no need to work and most of the men are pretty psychotic.

I can't properly say what I want to without [SPOILERS] so don't read on unless you want to.

About three quarters through the book I wrote some notes about what I thought was happening - and was right about most of them - but my guesses didn't detract from the suspense of the story. And in fact when the inevitable body turned up in the gentleman's club I thought that although we know who done it - actually any of the 'gentlemen' could have done it - they were all mad enough.

And why was Mrs McLeish not pursued by the police when she went missing from the car crime scene and did not turn up for several days? Perhaps the final confession (and the Lamia) were all a red herring and Mrs McLeish really got away with it scot free. Note that is is worth looking up the amusing origins of the meaning of scot free - which I did when trying to decide if it is scott or scot free! ( )

Started off slow, but then I really got into it. Wasn't sure what to expect - ended up being a perfectly balanced 'ghost'* story. I loved it. Nicely paced and slowly revealing, without the hugely disappointing ending I find horror often has (probably because this is not exactly horror). I loved it.

*Decide for yourself. I won't spoil it for you. ( )

This one appeared in the post, not quite sure who sent it to me. Wouldn't have picked it up otherwise.

This is a really good book. Michael, the main character, sees a picture of a girl on a landing, but nothing much is happening, a marriage that isn't going wrong but isn't going anywhere. The image of this girl in the picture become real to him, and his marriage to Elizabeth starts to blossom.

As she becomes happier she starts to discover secrets that she never knew about Michael and his past. It all comes to a head, and takes a dark twist. Reminds me of a plot of a Iain Banks novel, not startling, but unsettling. Will be reading his others ( )

And some more star. It was fresh and interesting. Partly interesting for a book to be written in 2006 and set mainly among the members of a gentleman's club and their wives. The narrative swaps between one gentleman and his wife which works well to avoid the supreme difficulty of having a single point of view. Most of the male characters in the book seem to have independent incomes and no need to work and most of the men are pretty psychotic.

I can't properly say what I want to without [SPOILERS] so don't read on unless you want to.

About three quarters through the book I wrote some notes about what I thought was happening - and was right about most of them - but my guesses didn't detract from the suspense of the story. And in fact when the inevitable body turned up in the gentleman's club I thought that although we know who done it - actually any of the 'gentlemen' could have done it - they were all mad enough.

And why was Mrs McLeish not pursued by the police when she went missing from the car crime scene and did not turn up for several days? Perhaps the final confession (and the Lamia) were all a red herring and Mrs McLeish really got away with it scot free. Note that is is worth looking up the amusing origins of the meaning of scot free - which I did when trying to decide if it is scott or scot free! ( )