Birmingham Writers’ Group

I take Lolly over to the Illuminated Southcotes. She places her hands on the glass cover and studies the model inside.

“This is lovely.”

“My granddad made it. My dad added to it.”

I slip a twenty pence piece in the slot. I watch Lolly as she watches the miniature people and vehicles move about the model town. Her lips twitch into fleeting smiles at each new scene.

“My dad added this last bit not long before he died,” I say. “Look. Here she comes.”

The tiny figure of a woman holding a baby, no more than half an inch high, runs down from the town, down the beach and into the sea. She doesn’t re-emerge.

John Hathaway is twenty-one years old, a delusional schizophrenic and a murderer.

And now that his father is dead, he’s the only person who knows someone or something has killed four women in the bleak seaside town of Southcotes.

Lolly Quale is drawn into John’s quest for answers, finding a distraction from her own problems through what she sees as their little make-believe mystery game.

And then a fifth body washes up on the beach…

Iain Grant’s third solo novel is a work of philosophical and storytelling trickery, which makes new use of the electronic book format to tell a story so astonishing you literally won’t know where it will take you next.