Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Three women head to Dark Fell Barn, a holiday cottage high in the Northumbrian moors for a weekend break. A surprise package sent by another member of their tight group of friends has with it a note that tips their seemingly successful lives upside down. Outside a storm gathers as things start to fall apart.
This dark and stylish thriller takes an unflinching look at the dark side of adult friendship. Each of her characters has a secret that makes the image they show to the world a false front needing only the smallest of pushes to fall away exposing the things they most want concealed.
Macmillan has the touch of a master puppeteer when it comes to building suspense and misdirecting her readers. Using it here to create a narrative that leads you along several seemingly logical paths, only, like the most frustrating of mazes to suddenly bring you back to where you started.
She also has a sharp eye for the ways that people who have (not always by choice) remained friends for a long time, but quietly exasperated by each other. Friends can be an adult omerta; of not wanting to make a scene – however this helps the resentments they create to fester, sometimes into something potentially deadly.
This is a thriller crafted with the skill of a master clock-maker that takes the frustrations of long-term relationships and the friendships awkwardly orbiting around them, and makes from them the stuff of nightmare
