This is not a book to read on a dark and stormy night. It’s a thriller set in England in the early 1960s. The central character is nine-year-old Samuel whose father is dead and whose much-adored mother went away without saying goodbye to him, leaving him in the hands of Ruth, the strict housekeeper.

He is bewildered by his mother’s long absence (100 days and counting) but reassured when he starts receiving postcards from her in the US where Ruth tells him his mother has gone to arrange finance for the family’s faltering business.

Or has she? Samuel’s school friend Joseph tells him a tale of a housekeeper who murdered the family for whom she worked, hiding their bodies in the cellar. Much as he misses his mother and clings to the hope that she is in the US and will return home soon, doubt creeps in and he begins to suspect Ruth of murdering his mother.

Samuel and Ruth live in a big old house with plenty of creaking floorboards, locked doors and secrets. When he looks for clues in his mother’s bedroom, what he finds just adds to the mystery.

Ruth is not a likeable character, but does she have the demeanour of a murderer, or is she just a strict woman with little talent for caring for a child, apart from making sure he is fed, clean and on time for school?

This is not a big book, and Giles maintains the suspense right to the unexpected ending of this novel. He is adept at getting into the mind of a boy whose emotions are already disturbed by his mother’s absence, as well as dropping subtle hints for the reader to explain the absence of Samuel’s mother.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville