This Little Dark Place (hardback)
How well do you know your girlfriend?
How well do you know your lover?
How well do you know yourself?
Daniel and Victoria are together. They're trying for a baby. Ruby is in prison, convicted of assault on an abusive partner.
But when Daniel joins a pen pal program for prisoners, he and Ruby make contact. At first the messages are polite, neutral - but soon they find themselves revealing more and more about themselves. Their deepest fears, their darkest desires.
And then, one day, Ruby comes to find Daniel. And now he must decide who to choose - and who to trust.
Reviews
- The Times"A short, sharp shocker that keeps you guessing to the end."
- Daily Mail
"This has an intensity and drama that explodes on the first page and lingers long after you have finished reading."
- The Sunday Times"[a] compelling psychological thriller...a terrifyingly plausible story of how everyday failures of empathy, compassion and, most of all, trust, can have fatal consequences."
- The i
"Pitch perfect noir. Hatch’s impressive debut exerts a grip from the very start...one of the most twisty stories of the year. A dark, cleverly plotted treat."
- The Irish Times"A.S. Hatch's first-rate debut, This Little Dark Place is a spare, elegantly written chiller in the true Highsmithian register...The plot is as well turned as the cabinets Daniel makes, the narration is unreliably delirious and there's an inspired use of Brexit, first as an unearthly chill across the land in the referendum's immediate aftermath and then as a frenzied, Brueghelian street party in a seaside town, a fittingly grotesque backdrop to the novel's unsettling progress."
"An emotionally raw and compulsively readable psychological thriller. A powerful tale of obsessive love and stealthy betrayal, full of twists that jolt you right up to the end."
- Alice Blanchard, award-winning author of The Breathtaker
"Carries the reader along with a sense of foreboding, with a shocking twist at the end."
- L.F. Robertson, author of Two Lost Boys
"A breathless page-turner with gathering tension throughout."
- Rebecca Alexander, author of A Baby's Bones