The Blurb:

“‘A long, oily blackness punctuated by quick, vivid dreams . . . They were all just dreams. She couldn’t possibly see these things, could she? Her eyes were closed. And if they really happened, then she would have screamed out from the pain, wouldn’t she?

On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, strolls home through a silent moonlit park. Suddenly her tranquil mood is shattered as she is viciously attacked.When she awakes in hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. 

But then, slowly and painfully, details reveal themselves – dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her, wisps of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand . . . 

In another part of England, Martha Browne arrives in Whitby, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?”

  What I thought:

I loved this – I listened to it on Audio CD on a long work journey this week and drove past several service stations even thought I desperately wanted a coffee, just because I wanted to carry on listening.

The book starts with a brutal attack (no graphic details as the victim can’t actually remember what happened to her). Kirsten is a University student on her way home from a party to celebrate the end of their exams when she is grabbed from behind and subjected to an assault that leaves her for dead. She wakes up in hospital 10 days later with no memory of what happened to her.

Meanwhile, a little across country, Martha has arrived in Whitby on a mission. She is looking for someone and it is up to the reader to guess who and why and how her story may be linked to that of Kirsten’s.

The book switches back and forward, laying out Kirsten’s recovery and Martha’s search side by side. To be fair, the link does become apparant fairly early in the book and I do wonder if that wasn’t actually the authors intention. However, despite the fact that I “guessed” early on, I was still enthralled with watching Kirsten as some of her memory starts to come back to her as she tries to get on with her life, and watching Martha as she continues on her increasingly desperate mission.

Thumbs up for Mr Robinson again!